Lindsey Parsons, Author at High Desert Health

August 3, 2026August 3, 2026

The Nutrition Mistakes Keeping Women Stuck with Elizabeth Aylor, FDN-P

July 23, 2026July 23, 2026

The Overlooked Role of Nutrient Deficiencies in IBS and Gut Dysfunction with Amy Hollenkamp, RD

July 6, 2026July 7, 2026

The Functional Medicine Approach to Graves’ Disease and Thyroid Disorders with Dr. Eric Osansky

Adapted from episode 171 of The Perfect Stool podcast and edited for readability with Eric Osansky, DC, MS, IFMCP and Lindsey Parsons, EdD.

Lindsey:

So, can you tell me about your own health story and how it’s shaped your practice?

Eric Osansky:

Yeah, so I was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism and eventually Graves’ disease, and it’s usually a shocker to everyone and to me as well, just as I was in the process of trying to lose weight. I was a little bit overweight, maybe like 10,12 pounds, normally I’m 170 and I was 182 and so I was dieting, detoxifying, exercising intensely, too intensely, but was losing weight. And little did I know that some of the weight loss, I’m sure, was due to what I was trying to lose, as far as the exercising and the dieting, but some of it was as well related to the hyperthyroidism.

And I didn’t catch on until I was walking in a retail store, and I took my blood pressure at one of those automated blood pressure machines, and my blood pressure was normal, but my resting heart rate was a little bit high, and I figured, because I wasn’t fully resting, I was walking around, so I took my heart rate manually the next few days, and it was anywhere between 90 and 110 beats per minute, and so I figured something was up. Went to a regular doctor, got a few blood tests, was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, and then eventually saw an endocrinologist, got the Graves’ disease diagnosis.

And at the time I really didn’t know much about Graves’. My background is as a chiropractor. I didn’t know about Graves’, but as part of my continuing education credits, I would always attend nutrition and functional medicine seminars, and I did coincidentally attend a few functional endocrinology seminars where they focus more on hypothyroidism and Hashimoto’s, just because that’s a lot more common, but they spoke a little bit about hyperthyroidism and how there are natural symptom management options. And there are with anything, there’s a cause behind it, so I decided that when I was diagnosed I was going to at least attempt the natural approach.

I had no idea if it would work. I tried to be optimistic, but when you don’t know anybody else who dealt with the same condition that you’re dealing with, you’re a little bit skeptical. But thankfully, what I did worked over time. I was able to normalize my thyroid hormones, my antibodies, the thyroid stimulating immunoglobulins, which are specific for Graves’, and then I just realized that there are so many others with thyroid and autoimmune thyroid conditions, and so I started. This was back in 2009 when I started working with others with these conditions, and just over the years I’ve been known more for hyperthyroidism and Graves’, just because of my experience, and then also there’s just not a lot of practitioners that focus on hyperthyroidism and Graves’, as most focus more on again hypothyroidism and Hashimoto’s, just because it’s the much more common condition.

Lindsey:

Yeah, why don’t you elaborate as to the difference between those two conditions?

Eric Osansky:

Sure, I could start by talking about the difference between hypo and hyper, and then talk about Hashimoto’s and Graves’. So you have thyroid hormones, the main thyroid hormone that’s produced by the thyroid gland, which is the butterfly-shaped gland in the middle of the neck, and it produces mostly T4 a little bit of T3 but T4 converts into T3, which is the active form of thyroid hormone, and that binds to the receptors. And there’s also T1, T2; we’re still learning about those, and you still can’t test for those at a regular lab, but with hypothyroidism, you have those thyroid hormones on the lower side, and then with hyperthyroidism, it’s the opposite, you have too much thyroid hormone. And then there’s a pituitary hormone called thyroid stimulating hormone, or TSH, and so TSH communicates with the thyroid gland, and so when you have low amounts of thyroid hormone, there’s more TSH, just telling the thyroid gland we need more thyroid hormone, so as a result, with hypothyroidism, with low thyroid hormone, you usually have higher TSH, and again that’s in response to the lower thyroid hormone.

What is hyperthyroidism? Since you have too much thyroid hormone, the pituitary gland is trying to communicate to the thyroid gland: let’s slow things down, there’s too much thyroid hormone, so there’s low TSH, often times depressed TSH. So with hyperthyroidism, you have elevated T4, T3, low or depressed TSH, and then hypothyroidism, you have low T3, T4 and many times it’s subclinically low, which means it might be within the lab range, but on the lower side, so it’s not overtly low, it’s not outside of the range. Unfortunately, many doctors will ignore it because it’s within the lab range, even though it’s not optimal. But again, hypo-low thyroid hormones, elevated TSH, and then most thyroid conditions are autoimmune, so most hypothyroid conditions are related to Hashimoto’s.

And Hashimoto’s is when the immune system attacks the thyroid gland, and that’s over time what causes the low thyroid hormone, whereas with Graves’, Graves’ involves the immune system attacking the TSH receptors of the thyroid, which stimulates the thyroid to produce more thyroid hormone, and there’s different antibodies, I mentioned the antibodies that came back positive for me were thyroid stimulating immunoglobulins, which are specific for Graves’, and then there’s thyroid peroxidase antibodies, or TPO antibodies, which are more common in Hashimoto’s, but actually a lot of people with Graves’ have them as well. I was negative for those, but I do see them in a lot patients with Graves’ and Hashimoto’s, and then thyroglobulin antibodies. Those are more specific to Hashimoto’s. Those are the three main types of antibodies, and so essentially that’s the difference between the two conditions.

And the problem with conventional medicine is that they do absolutely nothing for the immune system, as you know, they focus on the thyroid, so if you have low thyroid, if you have Hashimoto’s, usually they’ll recommend thyroid hormone replacement, like levothyroxine, and then with hyperthyroidism, they’ll recommend either medication, such as methimazole or PTU, or radioactive iodine, thyroid surgery, in some cases. And again, there’s a time and place for conventional medicine, there’s time and place for thyroid hormone, a time and place for antithyroid medication, even a time and place for thyroid surgery, but that’s all they like when it comes to medication. Again, they do absolutely nothing for the underlying cause that is the problem, which again, that’s why people are listening to this and watching this, because they want to know what to do. They don’t want to just take the medication again, maybe you have to take it along with addressing a causative problem, but if that’s the only thing you’re doing, then you’re setting the stage, potentially, for developing other autoimmune conditions in the future.

Lindsey:

Yeah, I’ve also seen on blood tests sometimes just in a measurement of thyroglobulin, period. What’s that about?

Eric Osansky:

Yeah, so thyroglobulin, so that’s a protein of the thyroid gland. So, when you have thyroglobulin antibodies, that means the immune system is actually attacking and damaging thyroglobulin, and you could test thyroglobulin separately. I can’t say I do it on a regular basis. If someone has thyroid cancer, and then they get the thyroid gland removed, then they’ll look, and they’ll test thyroglobulin, just because that should be low or pretty much non-existent, because there’s no thyroid gland. On the other hand, if someone has a thyroid gland, and if they test thyroglobulin, and if it’s elevated, it could mean a few things. Sometimes it’s just elevated because you have those thyroglobulin antibodies. There is some evidence that it could be related to an iodine deficiency. I don’t know if I would rely on that for that. There are some published journal articles showing that when it’s really high, it could be an indication of cancer. Most of the time, it’s not. I’ve seen some high readings, at least when I look at it, when again, it’s usually not cancer, but there’s always a risk. Again, if you have those thyroglobulin and antibodies, it’s not uncommon to also have that thyroglobulin marker elevated as well.

Lindsey:

Yeah, that’s why I’ve seen it, because my sister had thyroid cancer and had her thyroid removed, and I looked at her blood test; that’s why her doctor ordered those. Yeah, do you have a an optimal reference range for TSH that you like to follow?

Eric Osansky:

I like to see between one and 1.5, everybody’s different, so if it’s between one and two, that’s fine. If it’s a little bit below one, I get a little bit nervous just because I see a lot of people with hyperthyroidism, but if someone has 0.8, I don’t panic. Yeah, I would say like a sweet spot is one between one and 1.5 but again, if someone has a TSH of 1.8 and everything else looks good, like their T3, T4 within the optimal ranges. Obviously you can’t just rely on symptoms alone, but if they’re feeling good, the other tests are within optimal ranges, I wouldn’t recommend intervention necessarily, just because the TSH is a little bit above what I consider the optimal range.

Some functional medicine practitioners consider an optimal range between one and three, so if someone’s a 2.5 they would consider that to be fine. Most natural healthcare practitioners usually, when it gets above three, there’s the consensus it’s an issue, and the problem is that most labs, their reference range goes up to 4.5 or five, so someone could have a TSH of 4.3 and that usually is indicating a problem, but because the lab says that it’s not a problem, they usually just say keep an eye on it, they might not, if it’s just part of a physical, they might not say to keep an eye on it, just do the next physical, and so that would be what I consider the optimal range of TSH.

Lindsey:

Yeah, so what symptoms are coming with Graves’ disease, and how do they differ from Hashimoto’s?

Eric Osansky:

Yeah, so I could share some of my symptoms. When I dealt with Graves’, I experienced that increased resting heart rate, the tachycardia, which is a pretty common, a pretty classic symptom. I also had heart palpitations, I didn’t have anxiety, but anxiety is pretty common. Insomnia is common. I did experience a lot of weight loss. I mentioned how I was trying to lose weight, and I was at 182 and I ended up at 140, which is definitely a lot lower than was, I’m sure, due to my weight loss efforts, but again, a good amount of the weight loss, I’m sure, was due to the hyperthyroidism as well. Weight loss is common. Think of it, it speeds up everything. The heart rate increased, the palpitations and anxiety, increased bowel movements. So, frequency of bowel movements, sometimes loose stools, diarrhea, heat intolerance.

Whereas with hypothyroidism, you get things slowing down, you get fatigue, you get brain fog, you get constipation, and commonly instead of heat intolerance, you get coldness. Hair loss is common with both hyper and hypo, depression, probably more common with hypothyroidism, not that people can’t be anxious. And that’s the thing, sometimes you get conflicting symptoms; there are people with hyperthyroidism who don’t lose weight, who have the opposite problem for numerous reasons, and they might have issues losing weight or actually be gaining weight, and that’s even more frustrating because most people, doesn’t matter if it’s women or men, but because you know men, a lot of men, like myself, trying to lose weight, it gets frustrating.

Some people, when they lose weight with hyperthyroidism, that’s like the silver lining. It’s like, oh, it’s a bummer to have Graves’ and hyperthyroidism, but at least I lost 15 to 20 pounds. Whereas someone who was looking to lose weight, and then they are gaining weight, or they can’t lose weight, and they see that one of the classic symptoms is weight loss, and with hyperthyroidism, everything is in the classic situation sped up, and then with hypothyroidism everything is slowed down, but sometimes you do get that overlap of symptoms.

One other thing I should mention that’s common with Graves’ specifically, not necessarily hyperthyroidism, there’s a condition called thyroid eye disease, and that’s when the immune system attacks the tissues of the eyes, and in some cases of Graves’, approximately 50%, even though most cases are very mild, but some cases it’s noticeable, where you see the eye bulging. The person could experience double vision, swelling of the eyes. In severe cases, it could compress the optic nerve. Again, most cases are more on the mild side, but every now and then, I’ll work with someone, and that was their first symptom, they had eye symptoms, and didn’t know what was going on, and they went to an ophthalmologist, maybe first an optometrist, and then eventually an ophthalmologist, and got diagnosed with Graves’ that way, and not through an endocrinologist, which is how most people are diagnosed with Graves’.

Lindsey:

Yeah, okay. So, what causes Graves’ disease, and how does it relate to gut health?

Eric Osansky:

Yeah, great question. In Graves’, as well as other autoimmune conditions, you have what’s called a triad of autoimmunity, also known as a three-legged stool of autoimmunity. There is a genetic component, and you can’t change the genes, you could change expression of genes. But the good news, you could change the other two factors, which is being exposed to one or more environmental triggers, and the third component is that increase in intestinal permeability, which is also known as the leaky gut, and so if you’re exposed to triggers, it could be certain foods, such as gluten, stress could be a trigger, both emotional, physical stressors. I was also, I mentioned, I was exercising intensely, I was over training, so it was in my case. Stress was definitely a factor, but it wasn’t just emotional stress, it was too much exercise. Infections like viruses, speaking of the gut bacteria, like H. pylori, there’s a correlation between H. pylori and Graves’, as well as with Hashimoto’s toxins and toxicants, where, of course, you live in a toxic world. And then again, you have that leaky gut component as well, so the gut plays a role in a few different ways, you get that leaky gut that can make someone more susceptible, and then most of the immune system cells are located in the gut, so just by that alone you need a healthy gut to have a healthy immune system. And then I mentioned certain infections, things like H. pylori, parasites, can set the stage, or at least be contributing factors, when it comes to a development of Graves’.

Lindsey:

Is there a specific diet you recommend to people with Graves’ disease?

Eric Osansky:

Yeah, yes, and no. I wrote in one of my books, The Hyperthyroid Healing Diet, a little bit misleading, because when you hear that, you might think that there’s a single diet, but I actually talk about three different diets. And even with those diets, there are variations, but there’s what’s what I refer to as a level three, level two, and level one diet. The level three is the most restrictive, it’s an autoimmune type diet, like a modified AIP diet, and that’s usually what I recommend for people to start with, and then follow that. It’s like an elimination diet. The way I look at it, it’s not a permanent diet, it’s a starting point, an elimination type diet, and eventually they’ll reintroduce foods, but then a level two is kind of like a modified paleo, so if someone just is not ready to follow a level three, then they could follow a level two, again modified paleo, and then level one is the least strict of the diets. If you’re familiar with Dr. Stephen Gundry’s Plant Paradox diet, it’s a modification of that, though it does allow some properly cooked legumes, beans, lentils, minimal grains, so there’s more flexibility. So if someone’s a vegan, they might choose to follow the level one diet, but, really, we both know there’s no single diet that fits everyone. What we all have in common as practitioners is at least more on the natural side, maybe not conventional, but even conventional, you would hope that they recommend whole, healthy foods, avoiding the refined foods and sugars. And then, of course, common allergens like gluten, dairy, at least while healing, especially gluten, essentially it’s an autoimmune type diet, is what I recommend, but it really depends on the person.

Lindsey:

Yeah, that’s one of the things that I sort of object to in the Gundry stuff about excluding the beans and lentils, because as somebody who looks at gut health reports all the time, low fiber and low butyrate producers, that’s one of the things I see most commonly on people’s gut reports, stool tests, and so if you take out beans and lentils, which are the powerhouses of providing fiber, then it’s really hard to get enough fiber. And it’s hard to get enough protein if you’re a vegan or a vegetarian.

Eric Osansky:

Yeah, I agree. Even with AIP, more recently I’ve questioned, just because the benefits that legumes have to the gut microbiome, and I know they’re not part of AIP and they’re not part of paleo for the same reason, just because of lectins and the compounds. But then if you’re properly preparing them or pressure cooking them, at the very least it greatly reduces those, and I’ve also thought about, is it absolutely necessary for people to do. People do heal on AIP and paleo, but it is more challenging to get in the fiber-rich foods that way, and legumes also are a good source of protein.

Lindsey:

Yeah, I used to eat very few until I got a report with high beta glucuronidase, and I knew I needed to cut down on my meat and my fat and eat some more plant-based proteins. So I just went out and I bought several bags of hard beans and started soaking them overnight and putting them in my Insta pot, and all of a sudden it became easy. What seemed like this big obstacle to eating them, it was like, oh no, if I just soak them at night, then the next day I’ve got a solution, I’ve got something for dinner. And for me personally, they definitely help.

Eric Osansky:

Quick question with that, do you still need to soak them if you put them in a partial cooker, though?

Lindsey:

I soak and rinse them too. I think that gets rid of some of the lectins.

Have you found that mycotoxins play a role with Graves’?

Eric Osansky:

In some cases, yeah, definitely becoming more and more aware of the impact of mold and mycotoxins. And 10 years ago I didn’t recommend urinary mycotoxins testing. Now, of course, it’s a lot more common. There are more labs that offer that, which makes it easier, but yeah, that falls in the environmental toxin category. And unfortunately, as you’re aware of, I’m sure it’s a problem that is overlooked, because if someone just doesn’t see a leak, or any signs of water damage, assume that molds aren’t an issue, even though it could hide behind walls, underneath the floor, and then it could colonize the gut as well. Yeah, that could definitely be a potential trigger, and/or impact gut healing as well, if it is colonizing the gut.

Lindsey:

I’ve been testing it more and more, and unfortunately finding so many people with mycotoxins, and even people who are like, oh it’s a new house, it’s only six years old, and we just moved in. But it’s in Florida, and did it rain while they were making your house, and then suddenly the mold spores are already in there? A new house is no guarantee, and I hate to deliver that news, because it’s a super huge expense, so all I can say is, before you buy a house, before you rent a house, just pay for a mold test, because you’ll save yourself such a nightmare.

Eric Osansky:

It’s important you mentioned this too, because a lot of people might say, “Oh, you know, I just had the inspector, the inspector said that it’s mold-free, but they’re not mold experts, so when you say do a mold test, you need to go outside of what the home inspector is doing, because a lot of times they’ll miss the mold. Thanks for bringing that up.

Lindsey:

You talked a little bit about some of the conventional treatments for Graves’. What are the risks of doing those treatments?

Eric Osansky:

I mentioned that there are typically three treatment options. The first is antithyroid medication; methimazole is the most commonly recommended medication, at least in the United States. And then there’s also Propylthiouracil, or PTU, which sometimes is given, especially during the first trimester of pregnancy, or if someone can’t tolerate methimazole, they might put the person on PTU. Side effects are common. It’s all risk versus benefits. You do want to be safe while addressing the cause of the problem, and there are natural options to help with that. But like I said, there is a time and place for the meds.

But the meds, they affect the liver. A lot of people have elevated liver enzymes, sometimes suppressing the white blood cell count. There’s evidence that it affects the gut microbiota, it affects the composition, affects the permeability of the gut, potentially. It’s one of those things. If someone absolutely needs to take the medication, and a lot of people I work with do take the meds, and if they’re tolerating it well, especially if they’re on lower doses, I’m not going to tell someone to stop taking the meds, because there’s also no guarantee that natural agents like bugleweed, which is what I took, will work. I mean, it worked wonderfully for me.

Bugleweed’s an herb that has anti thyroid properties. The medication side effects are common, sometimes causing rashes, but it’s risk versus benefits. So, if someone’s listening to this, and if they’re taking antibody medication and they’re tolerating it well, it doesn’t mean that you should switch to a natural agent. Again, once people work with me, some people do ask, if I’m on the methimazole, and I’m tolerating well, can I switch to something like bugleweed, and I’ll tell them, I can’t tell you to stop taking the methimazole, but you could add the bugleweed at the same time, and then when you do your updated thyroid panels, if things are looking better, then you can ask the prescribing doctor to reduce the dose of methimazole and gradually wean off that way.

Radioactive iodine is another treatment, and that is pretty much destroying the cells of the thyroid gland. So, goes without saying, you don’t want to do that. That’s a pretty big risk, that you most likely will become hypo, but it’s beyond that. It’s not doing anything for the immune system. None of these things, as I mentioned earlier, whether it’s thyroid surgery or whether it’s radioactive iodine, they’re just focusing on the thyroid gland. So, with radioactive iodine, I don’t know why they do it in other countries, and not here, but they’ll quarantine people for a few days, and again, it’s radiation.. you’re not supposed to get pregnant at six months after getting radioactive iodine, yet they’ll say, “Oh, it’s fine, you know, it’s not a problem, it’s completely safe to do that again”.

And I have some information on my podcast on radioactive iodine, like, oh, another reason too is it could increase the risk of developing thyroid eye disease, and this is also in the research, and most endocrinologists, if someone has thyroid eye disease, they won’t recommend radioactive iodine, but the problem is, sometimes people have a very mild case of thyroid eye disease, and they don’t know it. So, there’s been cases where someone took the radioactive iodine or received radioactive iodine, and then they developed thyroid eye disease, like that. It flared up, so they probably already had it, but it was kind of underlying, and it’s a bummer when that happens. And surgery again, there’s a time and place for surgery. If someone has thyroid cancer, then they very well might need to get thyroid surgery, but with Graves’, I’m not saying there’s never a time and place, but the problem is it’s an immune system condition. So if you get your thyroid removed, you’re not doing anything to address the autoimmune component of Graves’, and then obviously there are risks with thyroid surgery.

If someone listens to this, chooses thyroid surgery, you want to choose a surgeon who has done a lot of them, ideally hundreds of them, just because it’s not uncommon to have damage to the parathyroids, for example. And you could say it’s rare, but it’s not that rare. It’s not one in a million, it’s like 2% and that to me is a high enough percentage, where, maybe in some cases something to consider, but it should usually be a last resort.

Lindsey:

Yeah, I have a client who had surgery, I don’t know if it was thyroid surgery or a different surgery, but the parathyroid was damaged and she has real trouble. It’s an important gland for regulating the mineral balance in your body. She has real trouble regulating her minerals and keeping the right . . .

Eric Osansky:

. . . especially calcium.

Lindsey:

Yeah. Tell me about the natural treatments for Graves’, and I want to hear more about this bugleweed. I’ve never heard of that. How is that used?

Eric Osansky:

Bugleweed is an herb, so it’s not as common as other herbs, like milk thistle or ashwagandha, for example. It’s an herb that the main property is that it helps to lower the thyroid hormones. And when I took it, again, that was my first experience with it. I didn’t know if it would work, but I started taking it. I took a teaspoon twice per day, and pretty quickly noticed my heart rate was decreasing, but I was having palpitations. So I took another herb that’s common with hyperthyroidism, one called motherwort. I don’t know if you’ve heard of motherwort but that helps to support the cardiovascular system, and has some other benefits too. But I took the motherwort and that helped greatly, and a lot of people I work with take bugleweed and motherwort.

There’s also l-carnitine, which I’m sure you’re familiar with, but l-carnitine, commonly used for fatty acid oxidation and supporting mitochondria. But research shows that larger amounts could block the entry of thyroid hormone into the cell, taking between two and 4000 milligrams per day, that’s another option for some people. There’s also lemon balm as a common herb used in the hyperthyroid world and has some mild antithyroid properties.

When I dealt with Graves’, I didn’t take lemon balm or l-carnitine just because I wasn’t as familiar with them back then. So from a natural standpoint, there are those options. Selenium is very important, just overall for the immune system. A lot of research with not just Graves’, but also Hashimoto’s and selenium. Vitamin D, we know modulates the immune system, omega three fatty acids. There are a lot of natural agents.

One thing I do want to bring up now that you mentioned mold, and for mold people use binders. For mold, a lot of most natural healthcare practitioners use natural binders, but then there’s also what’s called Cholestyramine, which medical doctors use, and Cholestyramine actually has been shown in the research to help with hyperthyroidism as well. Now it’s not my number one go-to, but if someone can’t tolerate the antithyroid medication like the methimazole, and maybe if the natural agents aren’t working, Cholestyramine is something to consider as well. If you could get a prescription, and the way I’ve had people get a prescription is just to show the endocrinologist the research. If they say that I told them to get Cholestyramine, they usually won’t be able to get it, because they don’t want to hear that from a chiropractor. But if they actually show them the published research, and the published research shows that it’s for mild hyperthyroidism, I’ve had some people where their thyroid hormones are pretty high, and the Cholestyramine has worked. It’s not doing anything for the cause of the problem, but neither is bugleweed and motherwort. Those are just natural symptom management options.

And then I probably should – this is not natural either, but low dose naltrexone. Some people take that as well to modulate the immune system with not only Graves’, but Hashimoto’s. I find with Graves’ it’s more hit or miss, that it doesn’t always work, and of course it’s also not addressing the cause of the problem. So usually I try to focus more on the natural agents, correct the nutrient deficiencies. If someone needs adrenal support, of course, do as much as you can from a diet and stress management standpoint, but sometimes give supplementation, sometimes probiotics, prebiotics to support the gut microbiome, and of course try to do as much as you can through diet as well. I like doing testing as well. Some practitioners aren’t big into testing, and I don’t go crazy with functional medicine testing, but I do like to do some testing, some adrenal testing, some gut testing at times, but it does depend on the person. I don’t like to recommend the same supplements for everybody.

I like to see what patterns they have with the adrenals and what’s going on with the gut, and I do blood testing as well. And if someone’s deficient in vitamin D or other nutrients, like iron, a common one too. You probably see this too. A lot of people are deficient in iron, but yeah, sorry, I went off a little bit as far as some of the natural approaches. But if you have any other questions regarding that, definitely let me know.

Lindsey:

Yeah, no, I was curious if you’ve thought about what the mechanism of action of cholestyramine working might be.

Eric Osansky:

Well, from what I understand, maybe I’m wrong, but I thought it actually binds to, just like it is a binder, so it’s actually binding to the thyroid hormone, and then the body clears it out. As from what I understand it doing now, and if that’s true, if someone has hypothyroidism, they would want to be careful, especially if they’re taking, and we know this too, if they’re taking any type of medication, not just thyroid hormone replacement. You would want to take the cholestyramine away from any meds, away from any foods, because it could bind to those as well. Right?

Lindsey:

Right. Yeah, I hadn’t thought about that, because certainly there’s going to be people that I’m working with who are hypothyroid and getting mycotoxin treatment, although I don’t normally, since I’m not a doctor, there’s no cholestyramine involved, but sometimes they do bring in a doctor who does prescribe it, and I was curious, do you see then that adrenal issues are often upstream of hyperthyroidism?

Eric Osansky:

Yeah, adrenals definitely, whether you have hypo or hyper, you do want to focus on that adrenal, and that’s why I test. You could also say, if everybody has adrenal issues, why not just address adrenals? But I like to see the adrenals, because in my experience too, I’m a little bit biased, because my adrenals were shot. I had low cortisol, low DHEA. The saliva test I use looks at secretory IGA, which was also in the tank, so everything was low, and it took that to convince me. Because up until that point, I think stress is a factor, but I’m doing a good job managing stress, not also really thinking about the over training that was impacting my body. So I think some people do need that convincing, then to see the adrenals, and then it was nice because I was able to do a retest three months later and see things improve, head in the right direction, but I think without question adrenals are a priority. Not just with thyroid but with sex hormones. I’m not against HRT, but I think a lot of people have low sex hormones because their adrenals are compromised, and again, there’s a time and place for hormone replacement therapy, but why not optimize adrenals, either initially or even if you’re going to do it at the same time, eventually you might not need as much of the HRT if you’re improving adrenal health with hyper and hypothyroidism. I definitely think that’s a big priority.

Lindsey:

I’m currently using a continuous glucose monitor. I got a free sensor for a couple weeks, and I know that I have stress, but now I can see it in super clear terms, because I can see that as soon as I have a stressful event, my body’s shooting out cortisol, my blood sugar is jumping up, so I can see in real stark terms. I can also see that when my blood sugar drops at night to way too low, my body releases cortisol and my blood sugar shoots up. And you don’t really realize the constant state of stress we’re under, but just working, just the hours in which I’m working versus watching television, the difference in my blood glucose is stark. So to get back to the whole adrenals, can you just adjust the adrenals, or do you really need to address the root cause, which is the stress?

Eric Osansky:

Yeah. No. Oh, absolutely. It’s not just about taking supplements. If all you do is take some adrenal supplements, that’s probably not going to fix the problem. So, to me, that’s extra support. The number one thing you need to do is improve stress handling. In many cases, you’re not going to be able to do anything about the stressor, especially if someone’s like a caretaker or something. There’s situations where it’s just impossible to eliminate the stressor, so it’s all about improving stress handling, and, and that’s great. The example you gave, and someone brought up to me, will they ever come out with continuous cortisol monitors, and again, like you said, there is that relationship between blood sugar, so you could certainly use a CGM for that.

But it would be also cool if they do eventually look at the actual cortisol levels too. And you could see that throughout the day, that would be even more convincing, because a lot of people, when they look at CGM, they’re not making that relationship between stress, they’re just thinking about food and what they’re eating. But you’re right, there is that relationship between blood glucose, insulin, cortisol, and I think that’s a big game changer. Because these days I don’t take adrenal support, I did take adrenal support back then, just for extra support, but it’s been years since I did that. Now, what’s keeping my adrenals in a healthier state is, the two main things is just blocking, like stress management techniques, or blocking out time for stress management, and trying not to take life so seriously, realizing that things could always be worse.

And then the other thing is sleep, just try, and honestly, even that I could do a better job. I was just telling someone, a patient earlier today that, last night I was proud of myself because I got to bed at 9:58, before 10, which some people might think sounds impressive. But my wife wakes up early, so I got up today at a little after five, so that’s in bed for like seven hours. I probably got six and a half, and again I try to aim for seven, seven and a half hours of sleep, but I don’t always accomplish that. So again, I could even improve that, but the two things, stress management and sleep, are really critical when it comes to optimizing your adrenal health.

Lindsey:

Yeah, no, so I’m kind of questioning, like, do these saliva adrenal tests really capture what’s going on? Because I did a Vibrant Hormone Zoomer, and so you’re getting both the urine and the saliva at the same time, and the first time I did the test, I was super stressed out, because I woke up at 5:30 in the morning, and I normally get up at seven, so I’m totally annoyed that I have to spit for the next 15 minutes at 5:30 in the morning, and then half an hour later, and a half an hour after that, or an hour after that, and take urine samples. And I’m doing all this stuff, and whatever cortisol reading I get, I can tell you it is not reflective of how I normally feel, because I am completely stressed out. And I did it again, and I was not stressed out, so I’m curious to see whether there’ll be a big difference. But the urinary cortisol wasn’t elevated, it was just the saliva, which I assume is a more direct measure of what’s going on right then and there, so I do wonder if we had this continuous cortisol monitor, if we did it day after day after day, or you know, I always tell people, if I’m doing adrenal testing, try and make it a non-stressful day, just a regular day.

Eric Osansky:

Same here. Yep, and we also do some dried urine testing as well, so not on everybody, but either way, if we see an extremely elevated cortisol in the morning, the first thing we’ll do is, was it a normal morning? Was it where you’re extremely stressed out that morning? Because you’re right, it does make a difference. That’s one of the flaws of going to a lab and doing a blood test, a lot of people get stressed out with the blood draw, and that could artificially spike up cortisol. But you bring up a good point, if someone is just stressed out for whatever reason, and the collection procedure sometimes, that does stress people out. Some people have issues like that, or difficulty generating enough saliva, and that could be stressful as well. And then they see abnormally high cortisol levels, and so you’re right, there’s no perfect test. And what we discussed, it would be awesome to have that continuous cortisol monitor, so you don’t have to collect any samples, and it’s constantly monitoring your cortisol throughout the day, and I’m sure it’s got to be coming. I mean, you were figuring . . .

Lindsey:

I mean, they’re already developing toilets that are analyzing your microbiome, so I can’t imagine it’s too far out for the cortisol.

Eric Osansky:

If not, me and you, we could team up and create it.

Lindsey:

Yeah. No, I mean, I speak of going to labs, every time I test my fasting glucose, it comes in around 99, 100, 102, something like that. So I thought, do I ever have low glucose? Well, sure enough, I do. It’s just that the cortisol then shoots up and it pushes it back up. So I realized seeing that fasting glucose – you can look at A1C and you look at insulin, and all these other things, so I knew that there was probably not a blood sugar problem, but now it confirms it, because I have the CGM data. So interesting. So in terms of nutrients, you mentioned some things like selenium and vitamin D and omega 3s; any other nutrients that are really important for thyroid function, either way, for Graves’, for Hashimoto’s?

Eric Osansky:

Yeah, iron, I mentioned is important, far more so for hypo, as far as if you’re deficient in iron, that could be a factor with hypothyroidism, but if you’re deficient in iron, even if you have hyper, but regardless, even if you don’t have any thyroid condition, you want to correct iron deficiency, because it’s important for supporting mitochondria. But magnesium is important overall. Really, all the nutrients are important, but probably the most controversial nutrient when it comes to thyroid health is iodine. And iodine, you need it for thyroid hormone production, but too little could result in hypothyroidism.

But then there’s concerns over too much iodine, and it’s confusing because you have different practitioners giving different recommendations. There’s Dr. David Brownstein, has a great book, Iodine: Why You Need It, Why You Can’t Live Without It, a very interesting book, and he’s been doing this for a long time, but he does recommend high dose iodine, like 50 milligrams of Ioderal, and again he’s had success with it, I’m sure, or he wouldn’t be recommending it. But not everybody does well with massive amounts of iodine, and then you have others who recommend the opposite, like 200 micrograms or less of iodine, and not to exceed that, and there is some evidence in the literature that iodine could maybe play a role in developing autoimmune conditions, and I have at least every few people per year I see who it seems like the problem that they had, usually in hyperthyroidism, develops when they started messing around with iodine, taking iodine.

And I should say I actually, in the past, when I dealt with Graves’, 2008 is when I was diagnosed, back then the higher dose, like Dr. Brownstein, and all that, that was more in favor, so I actually, at that time, I was taking high dose iodine, and I had a good experience with it. I can’t say anything bad personally, but just because I had a good experience for the first few years, I was having everybody do an iodine loading test, which also involves taking high dose iodine, like a 50 milligram tablet of iodine, and doing the urine test. And I would say a lot of people did okay, but then I did see people who didn’t do well, and sometimes it would increase the hyperthyroidism. And so others, like Dr. Fifo, Dr. Datis Kharrazian started talking about the concerns with iodine, and then others followed his lead.

I realized that iodine is important, but you want to be careful, especially when taking separate iodine supplements. I’m not anti-iodine. If someone’s taking a multi with iodine or eating some food sources of iodine, I think usually it’s okay. And even in those situations there’ll be this controversy that, like some, Dr. Alan Christensen will say, even with the food sources, keep it to 200 micrograms or less in those with Hashimoto’s. But the thing is everybody’s different. But because you don’t know who’s going to respond negatively to iodine supplementation, I’m definitely more on the cautious side, and I don’t recommend for people to take Iodoral, or other iodine supplements. And if someone was going to do that, then yeah, they probably should do a urinary test. Even that, there’s no perfect test for iodine too, so that’s the thing, but iodine, I felt the need to bring it up, just because, a lot of people have questions about iodine, and there is so much conflicting information, I wish I had all the answers when it comes to iodine, but all I could tell you is that can be helpful in some cases, and you definitely don’t want to be deficient in it, but at the same time you don’t want to necessarily just randomly take like 25-50 milligrams per day, because that could potentially cause more problems.

Lindsey:

Yeah, yeah. No, I thought that the whole thing was that Hashimoto’s was named after a Japanese doctor or patient. I don’t know, because in Japan they’re eating tons of iodine because of all those . . .

Eric Osansky:

Yeah. And there is some evidence in the research showing that that makes them potentially more susceptible. Even with the food sources, with someone’s eating, it depends, like sea vegetables, definitely, kelp could have a whole lot of iodine, so that I usually, and I talk about this in my book, The Hyperthyroid Healing Diet, again, I’m more cautious, not only with iodine supplements, but really high amounts of iodine rich foods. I would say, in those with thyroid conditions, maybe not to do that, just to be on the safe side.

Lindsey:

Yeah, yeah. What about zinc?

Eric Osansky:

Yep, zinc is very important. Vitamin A is very important. Both of those, zinc, vitamin A are also helpful for the receptor, the thyroid receptor, as well as omega 3 fatty acids. All the nutrients are important. Some of them more important, specifically like manganese, is important, but I don’t know, really specifically for thyroid health, like manganese and chromium, we know chromium for, blood sugar, but, from a thyroid health perspective, we could say, well, if your blood sugar’s out of balance, that could affect your adrenals and your thyroid, so indirectly we could make connections to all these as well. But yeah, zinc is definitely important for immune system health.

Lindsey:

Okay, so to summarize, could you just go over the basic steps of trying to reverse autoimmune thyroid disease, whether it’s Graves’ or Hashimoto’s?

Eric Osansky:

Sure, so number one thing I talk about is being safe, more so with hyper, but even with hypo, if someone has really low thyroid hormone levels, maybe they do need thyroid hormone replacement. If someone has elevated thyroid hormones, again, they could try the bugleweed is an option, l-carnitine in higher doses are an option, but again, some people do need the antithyroid medication. But either way, you want to be safe while addressing the cause of the problem, and then I would say the foundations of just incorporating the diet as well as stress management, sleep, not over exercising, you don’t want to be a couch potato, but you don’t want to over train.

So the foundations are important, and then I do like to do testing, because I find that many times we need to go beyond diet and lifestyle to see if we have adrenal imbalances. If we have, which most people do, and you mentioned the mold and other toxins, intoxicants, and gut issues, and so I try not to go overboard with the testing, and ultimately it’s up to the person. If I recommend more comprehensive testing, if the person’s on a budget, then of course we will try to prioritize the test, and vice versa. If I’m recommending something more conservative and someone’s like, “Hey, I just want to do all these tests, I might tell them, “Well, you know, you don’t have to. We could start out with these tests, but if one’s insistent on doing more testing, that’s fine.

But number one, safe symptom management. Two, the foundations. Three, let’s do some testing to try to find some of the triggers and underlying imbalances. And then, based on those, I usually give general recommendations initially, I have almost everybody on an omega 3 fatty acid, just because most people aren’t eating fish or not enough fish, and so that you could do a test if you want to confirm, but if they’re not eating fish and not taking a fish oil, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody who has a healthy omega 3 index who’s not taking omegas and not eating fish.

So I do recommend some basic supplements, but based on the test results, that’s where I’ll give more specific recommendations. But one thing I’ll say, though, is everyone could start with diet and lifestyle. You want to be safe too, that safe symptom management, so make sure that’s in play. But you could do things on your own to change your diet, you could do things on your own to improve stress handling, and sometimes you need help when it comes to sleep, depending on what the cause of the sleep issue is, but definitely work on diet and lifestyle on your own. If you can’t afford to work with a practitioner, of course, I’ll be biased. You’re probably biased. We think it’s good to have that support system and someone who’s knowledgeable and guiding you through, what to eat, what not to eat, what supplements to take and not to take, and some of that’s in my books, and there’s a lot on our podcast as well, but there’s no replacement for that one on one support, which is why you know Lindsey does what she does, I do what I do, and other practitioners do what we do. But if you’re not in the position to work with someone, definitely I would say start with diet and lifestyle.

Lindsey:

So, where can people find you?

Eric Osansky:

Yeah, thank you. So my podcast, which you, of course, appeared on. So, check out Lindsey’s interview, my interview with Lindsey, SaveMythyroid.com And you can just click on podcast. You could also check out my YouTube channel. Let’s see, I have a great Healing Graves’ Naturally Newsletter. Then my books, I have Hashimoto’s Triggers, Natural Treatment Solutions for Hyperthyroidism and Graves’ Disease, which is in its third edition, and the Hyperthyroid Healing Diet. You could find all those on Amazon, and those are probably the best places I would say to start.

Lindsey:

Okay, great. I’ll link all those in the show notes.

Eric Osansky:

Well, thank you. Thank you. This has been a wonderful conversation.

Lindsey:

Yeah, thank you so much. Any final thoughts before we go?

Eric Osansky:

There’s hope, and I say that just because, unfortunately, most medical doctors won’t, if you ask any, not any medical doctor, but I find most endocrinologists are not the most open-minded doctors. Again, I’ve had some on my podcast who are, but if you ask them about diet, lifestyle, they’ll pretty much shoot it down. You’re not really going to get much hope working with your doctor if you ask if there’s anything else you could do except to take the levothyroxine that they prescribe, or the antithyroid medication that they prescribe. They’ll say no. Well, in the case of hyperthyroidism, they say, yeah, you could take your thyroid out or get radioactive iodine, but they won’t do anything for the cause of the problem. But besides my own personal success story, I’ve been working with people for over 16 years, and it’s definitely possible. It’s not easy. I’m not going to say it’s easy to do it, but it’s definitely worth it, not just to restore your current health or reverse your current health condition that you deal with, but then also to prevent other health conditions from developing in the future. So, definitely well worth it.

Lindsey:

Yeah, indeed. Okay. Well, thank you so much. It was great having you.

Eric Osansky:

Thank you. Thank you so much, Lindsey.

If you’re dealing with gut health issues of any type (diarrhea, constipation, bloating, SIBO, IMO, H2S SIBO/ISO, IBS, IBD, gastritis, GERD, H pylori, diverticulitis, candida, etc.) or have an autoimmune disease and need some help, I see individual clients to help them resolve their digestive issues or reverse autoimmune disease naturally, You’re welcome to set up a free, 30-minute breakthrough session to see if you’d like to work with me. I also have my own two products, Tributyrin-Max, which is particularly helpful for loose stool and diarrhea as it slows your motility and firms up your stool, and SBI powder, which is an all around gut pathogen binder, which is super safe and won’t harm beneficial bacteria, and is usually the first line of treatment I educate my clients about in order to avoid stronger antimicrobial herbs.

*Product and dispensary links are affiliate links for which I’ll receive a commission. Thanks for your support of the podcast by using these links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

June 24, 2026June 24, 2026

The New Food Pyramid: The Good, the Missing and the Hopeful with Reed Davis, HHP, DNT

Adapted from episode 170 of The Perfect Stool podcast and edited for readability with Reed Davis, Double-Board Certified Holistic Health Practitioner (HHP), Doctor of Nutritional Therapy (DNT) and founder of Functional Diagnostic Nutrition® (FDN)*, and Lindsey Parsons, EdD.

Lindsey:

So, I had you on episode 115, and we focused on the effects of stress, sleep, and food sensitivities on the gut barrier and gut barrier function, but today we’re going to be talking about the new dietary guidelines. So, as somebody who deals with gut health issues and often suggests people try dramatically different diets given the current state of their gut, I’m curious what your 50-foot view is of the new dietary guidelines.

Reed Davis:

Diet is one of the most important epigenetic factors as far as affecting one’s health goes. We put that right up at the top of an all-natural, drug-free solution that is eating right, and so it’s about time they did something right.

Lindsey:

Definitely. So, what was your overall feeling about the new dietary guidelines?

Reed Davis:

I’m ecstatic. I mean, it’s not gone as far as it could, and it could always be improved. But the old dietary guidelines for Americans have, for the last number of years, decades, been completely upside down, and I think it’s largely because those who would put the guidelines out there, in this case, the Health and Human Services Secretary and the USDA, got together to reveal these things, and it’s better for Americans, it’s better for kids, it’s going to focus on more high-quality, nutrient-dense foods and things like that, like they say, “eat real food,” what a concept!

And so, I mean, you’ve been in this game a long time, right? How long have you known that that was right?

Lindsey:

Yeah. I don’t think that’s a big secret. It’s not that people don’t know they’re supposed to eat real food; they just really like processed food.

Reed Davis:

It’s true, and it’s going to take some new habit forming for some people. So many stories over the years of people, just about their entire health changes when they eat right for their bodies, for their genetics, and what we call metabolic types. So, I’m happy to break it down for you.

Lindsey:

Yeah. Well, we’ll definitely get into those details. So, one of the biggest changes in the new dietary guidelines was demoting whole grains to the bottom of the pyramid, where they used to be at the top of the largest section. So, I’m curious if people were actually eating whole grains, as opposed to white flour and white potatoes and white rice, do you think that would have been a necessary step anyway?

Reed Davis:

Yeah. Even the so-called healthy breads and things like that, and pastas, if there was such a thing, would be too much, and not enough protein and fat. So, absolutely, it was upside down. And the results are what you get in America.

I have a friend, Tom O’Brien, he’s really famous for some books on health and things like that, and he says that out of the top 30 civilized countries, America, in terms of health, was ranked number two from the bottom. We’re one of the most unhealthy countries out of civilized countries, and it’s because of diet, because of who’s been in charge of recommending diets, and I don’t mind saying that it’s those who would have monopolies and sell what’s good for their company’s bottom line, not what’s good for our kids to eat.

And I’ve got story after story, if you’re interested in me telling a couple, but yeah, I want to make sure we answer that thing, that there’s people who do perfectly well in America, don’t eat any bread or grains, you know they’re not really required.

Lindsey:

I’m aware, of course, of things like the Paleo diet, where you’re not eating grains or even legumes. Is that accurate for paleo? Right, you’re pretty much just eating vegetables, fibrous vegetables. So but I do find that when I look at people’s diets, that it’s very hard for people to get enough fiber if they’re not eating some grains. Unless you’re a very, very purposeful paleo person, and you’re getting those winter squashes and those sweet potatoes every day, or those kinds of things, that the typical person who’s not super diet focused, that it’s hard to get the quantity of fiber that we really need.

Reed Davis:

Yeah, definitely. Fiber is still a big thing, and you can’t eat just meat. No one says, “just eat meat,” in my world. There’s the Paleo diet, and there’s even diets that do focus on that, but I think they still get their fiber, though, because they always would sort of, if you’re on an all-meat diet, the carnivore diet, they call it, they still cheat and eat fiber, or they’re going to get digestive problems if they don’t. So, it’s really important to get the fiber, of course, and I prefer the green stuff, vegetables, and roughage as my mother used to call it, “got to have your roughage.”

Lindsey:

Yeah.

Reed Davis:

Because the Italians would call it antipasti, and these kinds of things. So, you’re definitely going to throw a bunch of that in there, and that’s way up in the pyramid. Well, the biggest, the big picture that changed is that the top, which is also the biggest section, is protein, dairy, healthy fats, alongside your vegetables, and some fruits, which there’s some nuances in that. The bottom section, which is now the smallest, your whole grain.

Lindsey:

Right.

Reed Davis:

So, yes, some would be okay. I have a little bit of the wheat-free, gluten-free toast sometimes around breakfast. It gets me some of the fiber that I’m looking for. I put a lot of protein with it, but definitely you’ve got to have, you made a good point.

Lindsey:

Yeah, I mean, it’s one of these things that in theory it would be great if everybody just ate vegetables, beans, lentils, that kind of thing to get all their fiber, but that’s just not how people eat. So, the inclusion of whole grains is important for the average person. Anyway, that’s my opinion.

But thinking about that, the grain question for somebody with a family tendency towards increasing blood sugar as they age, not necessarily somebody who’s pre-diabetic, what amount of actual grains, meaning things like whole grains, like brown rice or quinoa, or brown rice pasta, or whole grain flours, or whole wheat bread, if you tolerate wheat, do you think is a safe amount for an adult man or woman to consume without running into blood sugar issues?

Reed Davis:

Well, everyone’s different. So, what I recommend overall, before we even get to the food pyramid, is that people look at the amount of protein, fat, and carbohydrates on their plate in each meal, and make sure it’s balanced for their, let’s call it oxidative rates, for the way they burn fuel.

So, people burn fuel, some burn it faster than others. It’s just the way you’re born. You have your fast fuel burners, we call them fast oxidizers, and traditionally you think of native tribes, they can be one way or the other.

I have a cousin that lived up north with the Cree Indians. They’re almost Eskimos, very, very fast oxidizers. If they didn’t eat all fish and game that they were eating for tens of thousands of years, or at least 1000s and 1000s, they would get sick. Since they switched to Westernized food, they got sick, they all got obese, diabetes, pre-diabetes, and they also got depressed, became alcoholics, and have the highest suicide rate in all of Canada.

The Cree Indians, and it’s because, genetically speaking, they’re supposed to be eating fish and game, which is plentiful up there still, by the way, plenty of caribou and all kinds of fish and things, but when the Westerners came in, they brought with them, by the way, for mining gold mines, copper mines, they brought in their food with them, fast food. So, if you’re a Cree Indian and you’re eating Tim Horton doughnuts, that would be the same for any fast oxidizer, you get sick if you eat too much of the breads and things like that, especially when it gets really highly processed, the more processed the worse, and it’s really, really unhealthy.

Not to say there aren’t tribes in the world, like the Quechua Indians come to mind from South America. They live their entire lives above 8,000 feet in the mountains, and they eat corn and potatoes. Those things are very abundant there, and if you’ve eaten them for thousands and thousands of years, then they’re perfectly fine. Your body has adapted to that kind of diet.

It goes much deeper than what I’m telling you, even in terms of the minerals and things that are in the soils and stuff. So, you need what you’re born to eat. The problem is, we’re all mixed, and no one knows what they’re born to eat. That’s something that we help people figure out, but it’s really important, and the current administration figured out we’re really unhealthy. Well, let’s look at what we’re eating, and oh, it’s a bunch of junk, it’s literally an upside-down pyramid. So, they flipped it on its head, and we’ll see what shakes out. I’m very hopeful.

Lindsey:

Yeah, so clearly there are people, indigenous people in Australia, also in the same scenario. They came in and fed them a bunch of flour and cooking oil, and the fried bread, and those kinds of things, and they all got super sick and diabetic.

But yeah, most of us are some sort of mix of some amount of European or some amount of Asian, or Latin American, or in the US, or African American, so we’re all a mix of this country. So, what you were talking about, the fast oxidizer, these are based on HTMA, hair tissue mineral analysis, or?

Reed Davis:

One way to do it is an online test, people go to MTDiet, they take a test there. It’s a lot of questions about dietary habits, physical characteristics, and even psychological traits, because there’s other elements of getting the right diet, and so they don’t have to do any testing.

There’s some other discussion about HTMAs and how close does it get to true oxidation. You can always do it and eat that way and see what shakes out. You should have more energy. You should have a higher sense of satiation. You should feel well fed. Oh boy, what a great meal, I’ve got lots of energy, I can make it till my next meal without snacking. Your cravings go away, and you even have a sense of well-being in some respect.

So you feel fully satisfied, nothing was missing, you have lots of energy to work or play, whatever it is, to get to the next fuel stop. And then, of course, some sense of well-being would be icing on the cake, and an actually very appropriate, well-fed person, fully satisfied, not craving anything, should be happy. If you’re not happy, go soak your head. I’m kidding. I’m just saying, you need to work on that. There might be some other reason.

Lindsey:

Yeah. You said that website was MT Diet, like mtdiet.com?

Reed Davis:

Mtdiet.com, it’s really, it’s very scientific. It’s been around for 40 to 50 years now, and we’ve just been using that as a guideline. It won’t tell you exactly what your percentages are, but it would tell you if you’re fast, slow, or somewhere in between, what we would call a mixed oxidizer, in which case you just adjust the proportions of your macronutrients on the plate.

If it’s me, I’m a very fast oxidizer, so I can eat a lot of protein in every meal, and as long as you don’t – you have to eat clean, and there’s all kinds of other factors, but a lot of protein, and the protein I like already has fat built into it, so that because I eat meat, and so whether it’s salmon or whatever it is, I don’t eat chicken, but a lot of really good, high-quality meats, and so I get my protein and my fat from that, and then I will also add the right amount of carbohydrates, usually very nutrient dense.

I love dark green vegetables, and I can eat a lot of them. And if you do that, you’ll find, let’s say, you did that for breakfast tomorrow, some people just don’t eat enough protein and fat in the morning, and so they’re craving, and they’re drinking a lot of coffee, and by lunch, then they overdo it at lunch, different things can happen.

But if you do it right, you will have, again, the three criteria are lots of energy, satiation, for sure, you’re not missing anything, you’re not craving, and then, of course, the sense of well-being, I try to be happy every day, no matter what, but eating sure makes a difference. You’ve heard the word “hangry,” right?

Lindsey:

I have.

Reed Davis:

You’re hangry, because you’re not nourished, right? You’re just something’s missing, and it isn’t just low blood sugar all the time. It also has to do with what your body really needs, and so the macronutrient ratios are really important. That’s what’s missing from the food pyramid. They don’t say anything about how much protein, how much carbohydrates, how much fats.

Lindsey:

Right.

Reed Davis:

That’s a place it could go eventually, maybe, but at least it got protein and fat up at the top of the list.

Lindsey:

Yeah.

Reed Davis:

For these kids, kids are just at the mercy of advertising and eating garbage. It’s what’s convenient. No one wants to take the time to prepare meals.

When I’m cooking on the grill, I grill enough for two, or even three days sometimes, so my leftovers are good as the meal, and I can eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner, because it’s the same ratio. Try it, everybody should try it. Get out a ratio that feels good and eat that every meal. Don’t say, “well, for lunch I’m just going to have a salad.” If you’re a fast oxidizer, you’ll end up craving and hungry again.

You think of those Indians, my cousin was a priest, and he went up north, like really far. And I asked him one day about what do the people do there when they get sick? Do they go to see a medicine man? And he goes, well, I’m their “medicine man,” because he’s their priest.

I said, no, if they get sick, like the flu or something, he goes, oh man, they’re all sick, they’re all sick because they quit eating their native diet. Period. Obesity and diabetes and alcoholism, he said, were the most common things, and then that can lead to really bad social behavior, and so on.

Lindsey:

Yeah. So, you mentioned the fast oxidizers should be eating more protein or healthy fats. What about a slow oxidizer?

Reed Davis:

What’s the opposite? That’s again the Quechua Indians down in South America, and there’s many more with that kind of bloodline.

Now we have to go back to get to the original. You probably have to go back 500 generations. Well, no one can track that far back. You have two parents, you didn’t have a choice. You have four grandparents, you have eight great grandparents, and 16 great-great-parents. Now go back 500 times that and look at the top of that pyramid, but it’s a couple of 1,000 people all contributing to your DNA, the nose on your face, the hair on your head, if you have any.

Yeah, and the diet, what’s the right diet for you? It’s bred in the bones. Now you can eat that way, or pay the piper, and look at how sick we are.

Lindsey:

Yeah.

Reed Davis:

We’re not eating that way. And so, can’t, it’s too hard nowadays, unless you’re tribal. If you’re a Quechua Indian, you could probably know a great, great, great, great, great, great granddaddy ate the same thing you’re eating.

If you’re healthy, you could go to the Bantu tribe in Africa,, very dark-skinned, very healthy people with straight white teeth, because they still eat what their great, great, great to the 40th power great grandparents ate. They eat the same thing, and it applies, not only, we’re not talking about the pyramid now, but kind of the concept, not only would that give you the right percentage of protein, fat, and carbs, but the right sources, some indigenous foods, what was available all those years ago, and then whatever was in the soils.

We have vitamins and minerals, we have a sense of fatty acids, we have antioxidants, we have trace elements, phytonutrients, and really important constituents and we’re designed to use them all. Our bodies don’t have to be taught anything, and so then you’d have the kind of the micronutrients that would also match your genetics. So, if you want to live through your genetic potential, be the best that you could be, then you have to eat like that, and you have to figure it out.

Lindsey:

I do these Pure Insight reports with people’s genes, and they do spit out some results, certain genes saying you’re going to do much better with a high protein diet, your glucose is going to be much better managed if you exercise regularly, or you have the genetics of an endurance athlete, or things like that seem to pop up a bit. I mean, it’s obviously not complete, but it’s a little bit of information that people get.

So, anyway, but yeah, people can go to that website and look at what their ideal diet might be based on what they answer, and let me move on to talking about fats a little bit. So, one of the stark changes of the new dietary guidelines is a change in the recommendations on fats. Can you describe what those changes are and what you think of them?

Reed Davis:

Yeah, sure. More fat would be more energy and better balance, but it’s not so much just fat as the type of fat. So, they’re recommending now, of course, very high-quality fats, and not the crappy oils that we’re being fed.

If you go to a hospital today and look at what’s on the menu, it’s atrocious, the amount of seed oils. My wife and I use, it’s called Seed Oil Scout, SOS, and Seed Oil Scout, it’s an app you can get on your phone, and it doesn’t have every restaurant, but you can go to it and it’ll let know where you are, with a GPS in there, and it’ll tell you the good restaurants that have, are pretty much seed-oil free.

Some restaurants are seed-oil-free. They’ll use only avocado and coconut, and maybe some tallow, and things like that. That’s a good kind of fat that really, your body knows what to do with that. When it comes to seed oils, not so much, you’re not, that’s not bred in your bones, and so when it comes to trans fats, we don’t even want to go there, they’re just toxic.

Lindsey:

Yeah.

Reed Davis:

And there’s other ways to break down oils, omega 3, 6, 9, omega three generally anti-inflammatory, omega six more inflammatory, so seed oils, mostly omega six, are inflammatory. So if you have joint pain, you’re bloated in your face, and you have aches and pains from inflammation, seed oils make it worse, guaranteed, that’s how it works.

So, I’m glad you mentioned fats. We’re up against what’s convenient, what’s cheap, what has a longer shelf life, things like that. It’s going to be a long time before, for instance, any fast-food restaurant starts using good oils, they use what’s cheap, what has the longest shelf life, which is trans fats, and even if they’re using seed oils, they’re using the wrong ones.

Lindsey:

Yeah.

Reed Davis:

Avocado is really good, coconut, those are both seeds, avocado seeds, and coconut is actually a seed, and what I’m saying.

Lindsey:

Right.

Reed Davis:

So, I think it’s really important, as I said originally, the right percentage of protein, fat, and carb, and the right sources. Very important.

Lindsey:

I deal with a lot of clients with hydrogen sulfide SIBO who react badly to saturated fat, and I also have seen a lot of gut tests from people on high fat and high saturated fat diets, like ketogenic diets, and honestly, their gut microbiomes are pretty terrible, like mostly dominated by pathogens and opportunistic pathogens. So, I’m just curious if you’ve seen the same thing.

Reed Davis:

Yeah. Again, you need the right kind of fats, and some are not only inflammatory in terms of the joints and muscles and other tissues, it would include the lining of the gut, and so there’s another thing that made the cut.

When it comes to, the gut made the cut, they mentioned in the new pyramid that considering the gut microbiome is really, really important, and the previous dietary guidelines never mentioned it. And we run tests, it’s what I do, I teach a course in functional lab testing, so we look at these mucosal barrier assessments, so that’s not news to us. In two and a half decades I’ve seen all kinds of gut dysfunction, and everything that can turn into, which is worse, and helps correct it using the right diet.

Just not even a question, you can live yourself out of whatever you’ve lived yourself into, if you have time and dedication, if it hasn’t gone too far. There’s some people, I mean, they’ve gone so far as to really ruin receptor relationships, all these different things that are involved, the ability to digest, the ability to actually break down and absorb food properly, of course, once it gets in the body, how do you detoxify the body? All kinds of things come into it, but again, I’ve got concerns about the pyramid, but it’s definitely going in the right direction.

Not once do they mention testing, I think it’s a big mistake, or at least it’s an improvement that we’re still waiting for. They don’t mention food quality, they just say, they don’t mention organic versus conventional, big mistake, or at least again room for improvement. They don’t mention grass-fed versus grain-fed when it comes to meats, beef especially, that’s an area for improvement. They don’t mention wild-caught fish versus farm-raised fish, which is really, I think, incredibly important. So, these distinctions matter, the fatty acid profiles, for instance.

Horrible with farm-raised fish, and with grain-fed beef, and with conventional non-organic vegetables, the presence of pesticides and antibiotics, and that’s all yet to be widely distributed. I don’t see the government getting too involved.

Lindsey:

Yeah, definitely an improvement there. So, let’s talk about protein for a bit, so I listen to a whole variety of podcasts and hear a range of protein. What are the new guidelines saying? What would you recommend for minimum and maximum protein consumption?

Reed Davis:

With respect to metabolic typing and genetic requirements, I would say at least half of your plate should have some kind of protein and some fat, and then what would be really cool is if everyone would just start there.

If you’re not sure, we test, we go to mtdiet.com, we get, they give you the starting percentage wherever you start, because it’s 50/50 protein, fat, 50% carbs, all high quality, you’d want to use organic and all the things that we just mentioned, but well, you’d know from, you start to feel better, start to lose a few pounds, your brain fog would clear up, your cravings would go away, your sense of well-being may return tangentially.

If you then from that 50/50 start adjusting it up or even down, not too many Quechua Indians around here that could live just on potatoes and corn, but maybe you’ve got some slow, low oxidizer genes in you, but you would then go, odds are, you start at 50/50, then go up, go to 60/40 if it works even better, ah, you’re on to something. This is your own test.

If you go from there to 65/35, you might find you do even better. Boy, I really got a lot of energy. I can get all the way to my next meal with no snacking in between. My brain feels good, feeling good. You might try 70%. All these things would be adjusted, by the way, depending on the amount of activity. Work on a farm, you’re probably going to eat some more potatoes at nighttime. You need, you need that store of the carbs, but you get my point that it’s really an individual thing.

Their recommendation, the new HHS guidelines, which were backed up by the Food and Drug Administration, says something like one and a half grams of protein per kilo, so I don’t know why they use kilo, so for a 150-pound person you’d be looking at 85 grams of protein a day, or something like that.

Yeah, so we don’t use formulas like that, we use what it looks like on the plate, because it’s much easier. And then you can judge. We do give people, matter of fact, with that website I just gave, you would get your diet, some menu advice, you’d find out if you’re fast, slow, somewhere in between, and you would get the percentages.

They give you the percentages of each plate. They give you some diet check record sheets, which you can track, they’re just pieces of paper that have breakfast, lunch, dinner, and what you have, you write it in real quick. And then over on the right-hand side is how you feel, negative things like tired, unfulfilled, craving, cranky. Well, that wasn’t a very good meal for you, was it? But if you feel solid energy and the lack of cravings and sense of well-being, then, well, that was better, and you can actually fine-tune it. This is why health coaches are so important these days, in my opinion, they can help you, walk you through that stuff.

Lindsey:

Yeah.

Reed Davis:

What do you think about that?

Lindsey:

Yeah, no, I mean, I was always worried about getting enough protein, because I keep hearing these recommendations, like minimum, it’s like one gram per pound of body weight but then I heard something.

Reed Davis:

It’s a little more like it’s up to about 1.2 to 1.6, something like that.

Lindsey:

Yeah, I mean, I weigh 130 and I couldn’t even begin to eat 130 grams of protein in a day, like if I ate that much protein, I would be.

Reed Davis:

No, no, I’m sorry, it’s 1.2 to 1.6 per kilo, which is 2.2 pounds, yes.

Lindsey:

Right, okay, yeah, so it’s more like 0.7 to 1.0, or something like that, grams per pound of body weight. Yeah, I don’t know. I took somebody’s recommendation, and I think it came out to something like 90 grams, and I thought, no way, I’m even getting 90 grams of protein, because I might only have one meal with a really solid portion of protein, and maybe lunch is a little bit smaller, and breakfast is just like one egg, so that’s six grams, but I couldn’t even eat two eggs, and I just get stuffed and gross with what else I’m eating.

But anyway, I added it all up. I went into Cronometer, and I added it all up, and I was like, oh, I actually am getting 85 to 90 grams of protein a day. I was worried, because I wasn’t counting, there’s a little bit of protein in vegetables, there’s a little bit of protein in grains, it’s not like there’s none, it’s just a gram or two here, a gram or two there, it added up. So, I was okay, I was glad to see that.

Reed Davis:

How did you feel doing that? And how was your weight, and how was your mental clarity in things?

Lindsey:

Yeah, I mean, I don’t have issues with weight, I don’t have issues with mental clarity, but I have post-infectious IBS, so I don’t always feel great after eating, because there are periods where I’m having recurrent SIBO, and I bloat, so it’s not the kind of thing where I’m the best test case for anything diet-wise, but, but energy and all that, fine, yeah, no issues.

Reed Davis:

You might, you might be the perfect test case, because your body doesn’t have to be taught anything, every cell and tissue and organ knows what its job is. It just needs to be fed right, again, the macros, protein, fat, carbs, and the micros, vitamins, minerals, and essential fatty acids, antioxidants, trace elements, and so on, and it’ll know what to do.

So, but when we have, say, negative influences, whether it’s the environment or the way you think, or trauma, accidents, and things, bad things happen, you get out of balance, and demands are different, and then what you said about the grams, if you lean towards fast oxidizer, a few more grams of protein. If you lean towards slow oxidizer, it would make you sick, you wouldn’t feel well at all.

It’s like this, if you have a bonfire, a big fire, you’re a fast oxidizer, you’re burning up the fuel, you’re burning up the fuel, well, carbohydrates are like paper, you can’t throw paper on a bonfire, it’s gone. You throw big logs on a bonfire, and they burn for a long time, very solid, that would be protein and fat.

So, you look at those Eskimos, they’re super-fast oxidizers, you got to throw big logs on the fire, they can eat just blubber and some meat, and the only carbs they get would be seasonally, and they’d eat some of those, put on a little weight for the winter. If you just gave them, doesn’t matter how good the bowls of fruit and vegetables you gave them, they’d always be hungry.

And the same thing, those South American Andes natives, they couldn’t eat like that, they wouldn’t be able to move, they couldn’t burn it. They do well on paper diet, tubers, and corn, and low-hanging fruit, I guess, whatever. And milk, they do pretty, actually pretty good on goat and llama milk, and stuff like that.

Lindsey:

Yeah, let’s talk about milk and dairy, because as a gut health person, that’s one of the first things that I, gluten, dairy, those are the two most inflammatory, shall we say, or irritating to the gut, difficult to digest things, so a lot of the people I work with are dairy free.

I’m dairy free for the most part, because I’m lactose intolerant, and with recurrent SIBO, dairy is literally the worst thing I can eat, I feel bloated, and I feel terrible. But obviously, they’re high in the dietary guidelines, you can’t even get a school lunch without putting a thing of milk there. What do you think about dairy in terms of people with gut issues versus regular people who don’t have gut issues, and everything in between?

Reed Davis:

Well dairy, cow dairy for a lot of people is going to create a lot of mucus and problems, and so that’s besides the ones who are also lactose intolerant, which means they don’t have the lactase enzymes to break down the milk sugars, but milk can be irritating.

It has a protein called casein, it has fat, milk fat, and it has carbs as well, it has sugars, the lactose. So, there’s three different ways you can be eating wrong, despite how you handle that stuff.

I do agree with the new pyramid’s idea of higher fat content milk, because if you’re going to drink it, you might as well get something decent out of it for energy, so full fat dairy, not the low-fat junk we’ve been fed for decades. There’s nothing to say that’s any good for you whatsoever. That I accept. That doesn’t mean you can do unlimited saturated fats either. You don’t want to get more than a certain percentage of your calories, and again, the fast oxidizers could probably do 20% and slow oxidizers, less, maybe only 10%, but you got to have, so saturated fat, milk has plenty of it, it’s actually very nutritious for baby cows, so it can’t be all bad, right?

Lindsey:

Yeah no. I also get all mucousy with the dairy, and that is, yeah, the reason I had acid reflux until I stopped eating dairy. I mean, it was the single best thing I pulled out of my diet, but boy, it is really hard to go eat anywhere. Restaurants, so many dishes are, they’re like, oh, they’re so happy to market gluten-free, but every single dish has dairy, so, and that’s the worst thing for me, so it’s frustrating if you’re dairy free and react badly to it, because even, even with lactose enzymes. . .

Reed Davis:

Hard to go out.

Lindsey:

Yeah, it’s hard to go out, it’s hard to eat at anybody’s house. It’s just, yeah, it’s hard.

Reed Davis:

Well, more and more, the more we demand it from our food vendors, the more you’ll find it. There’s also some people who seem to do okay on the unprocessed, the unpasteurized.

Lindsey:

Raw milk.

Reed Davis:

That’s being sort of bandied about that it’s better for you, probably is, but I still don’t drink milk.

Lindsey:

Yeah, it didn’t make a lick of difference for my lactose intolerance, I’ll tell you that much, because I tried for a while. There’s all sorts of people out there claiming things like, oh, you drink raw milk, and you won’t have any problem digesting it. I’m like, yeah, no, not true.

Reed Davis:

Oh, that’s silly. Yeah, of course.

Lindsey:

Or “you eat yogurt, and that’s going to cure your lactose intolerance.” Also, no, that’s not a thing.

Reed Davis

Yeah, it’s hard for people because we do food sensitivity testing (can be ordered through Lindsey) as well. Pretty much every single client gets a food sensitivity test, because everyone has some. Everyone has some food sensitivity.

The question is, how much of those sensitivities are affecting your health? Are they contributing a lot to your dysfunction, or whatever it may be, or are they contributing a little? Well, we test everybody, and we find when they eliminate that food, that boy, that was the major contributor. We call it a contributor to metabolic chaos, and it’s really a valid term being used more and more often. What causes metabolic chaos, and all the downward spirals, and the cascade and resulting in dysfunction and disease and symptoms occurring, so food’s huge, and dairy is one of those that I don’t know too many people that it’s really good for, that just thrive on it, more dairy for that one, not in America.

Lindsey:

Yeah. So, I’ve been thrown, though, by the whole C15* coming out, because that’s a fat that’s mostly in dairy and some fish, and they’ve done all this research. It sounds like everybody’s supposed to have certain levels of it, healthy aging, the whole thing. So now I’m kind of like, are we supposed to be eating dairy fat? I’m okay with ghee, so I could get it that way without getting all the lactose and the casein and everything else. So, any thoughts on that?

Reed Davis:

Yeah, ghee, there’s people who use ghee, it’s clarified butter, so it doesn’t have the other, it’s just the fat, and I’d rather use tallow myself, which is what I cook often enough. Tallow and olive oil, some coconut oil, and avocado oil seem to agree with me pretty well.

Lindsey:

Yeah.

Reed Davis:

Although none of my ancestors knew what an avocado was, I don’t know how. I don’t know how that works.

Lindsey:

Yeah, have you heard of the Zero-Acre oil*?

Reed Davis:

What is it?

Lindsey:

It’s high in omega three. It’s produced by bacteria fermenting sugar into an oil that’s high in omega threes and doesn’t get badly affected by heat if you cook with it. I think it’s good to like 450 degrees.

Reed Davis:

Good temperature.

Lindsey:

They’re not using any land to create it, because they’re using bacteria to produce it.

Reed Davis:

Oh, I see. Yeah.

Lindsey:

Yeah, that’s something I use for high heat cooking if I need to.

Reed Davis:

Yeah, Zero Acre farms. I’ll look at it. Yep, I’m all for it.

I actually just invested in some transformation farms. You can buy conventional farms and turn them into organic farms. It takes three years, but the produce is so much higher quality, it sells more organic food, and is more expensive. It’s funny, because you’re getting less for your money, you’re not getting all those pesticides and herbicides and rodenticides and all the other things, but yeah, more expensive, much more creative ways to keep the bugs off, and these kinds of things. Yeah, so that’s really important, and so your health is pretty good, you would say, Lindsey, since you changed your diet?

Lindsey:

Oh, I mean, definitely better. Yeah, definitely better. I mean, it’s always a work in progress, but, yeah, no, I come up well on tests, for the most part.

Reed Davis:

Do you feel good?

Lindsey:

Yeah, I feel good. I mean, a familial tendency towards high cholesterol, familial hypercholesterolemia. So, yeah, I think I’m one of those people that doesn’t do so well with too much saturated fat. Also, I don’t know, gallbladder maybe doesn’t, doesn’t handle it so well. I tried the ketogenic diet once for like a month, and I started having pains, shooting pains in my body, so I was like, this isn’t good for me.

Reed Davis:

Yeah, well, I probably would recommend some lab work around liver function, and the gallbladder needs to flow very freely. You can’t have any congestion in your gallbladder.

Lindsey:

Yeah, no, I did a little kind of gallbladder cleanse thing.

Reed Davis:

Yeah, good. You don’t want to lose that.

Lindsey:

Yeah, no, I have no intention of losing my gallbladder.

Reed Davis:

You don’t get extra parts, do you?

Lindsey:

Don’t get extra parts, and some people think that that’s a disposable part, but definitely never seems to solve the problem when people get rid of it.

Reed Davis:

We had a patient many years ago, who said he came in, and he had some gallbladder digestion, and he said that he went to his GI guy, and they said, “oh, we’ll just take your gallbladder out, you don’t really need that anyway,” and ended up saying something like, “that’s our bread and butter diagnosis and treatment, gallbladder removal,” and it’s kind of insane. I mean, bread and butter, that’s how they make their money, is by taking them out. But we tried very hard to save his gallbladder, but he couldn’t maintain the discipline, he still wanted to eat wrong.

Lindsey:

Yeah.

Reed Davis:

So, he ended up paying the price.

Lindsey:

Yeah, I’ve just learned that I can’t eat things anymore like pork belly, like things that are super high saturated fat. That’s just going to make me feel absolutely miserable. So, I avoid those foods, but occasionally you do happen to find yourself eating a meal that was just way too high in saturated fat, and feel miserable.

Reed Davis:

Yeah, pork belly. Obviously, almost all fat, it would require a lot of digestive juices from the gallbladder, but the bile. Number one, if you really love the taste, you could probably take some ox bile with it and lipase.

Lindsey:

I could, but I don’t eat it that often. I’m not carrying around ox bile.

Reed Davis:

It’s not on everybody’s menu, for sure.

Lindsey:

No, but occasionally the restaurant looks good, and you’re like, oh, I’d order that, but I know I’m going to regret it.

Reed Davis:

Take your ox bile with you, and lipase, lipase is from the pancreas, they come together in the common duct before they go into the duodenum there to break down fat, and their signals when you eat fat, your body signals fat’s coming, and you’ll start to release the bile and the lipase, and you’ll be able to break it down. So, if you’re not doing that, you could end up with, it’s kind of easy to detect, they call it steatorrhea, which is light-colored stools that float, and you got to watch your fat.

Lindsey:

Yeah, what about light-colored stools that don’t float?

Reed Davis:

Yeah, I think the floatiness is maybe a better indicator, and that light colored could be something else, but that maybe there’s just enough going on there where they’re not floating, but the common symptom of poor fat digestion and breakdown would be the light-colored floating stools, it might not even be light, and other things would affect it.

These are the guidelines, those aren’t real tests. We have tests, we can do a stool test, we can do a urine test and figure out a lot of stuff that’s going on with people. We do saliva testing, of course, and blood work, all the things.

Lindsey:

What stool test do you like?

Reed Davis:

I like the old-fashioned ones where they actually had human beings looking at the stool, looking at it under a microscope, good microscopy, trichrome staining, antigen testing, and culturing. We had to have a person look at the kind of fuzz growing in the petri dish. They would do like seven or eight petri dishes per stool sample, and so it’s really hard and expensive to find that anymore.

So, everyone now is using DNA testing, the testing by PCR, which is all done by machines, and it’s accurate. It looks for parasites, bacteria, fungi, and viruses. It also does functional analysis, like elastase, and these kinds of things that would tell you functionally what might be off here and there, and that’s what people are using now, the GI map from Diagnostic Solutions Laboratory. It’s a good test, again, it’s not the old-fashioned way, but it’s fast, and it’s cheap, so people are using that, could tell you a lot, especially on the pathogen side. You could find people with some serious bugs, that’s not normal.

Lindsey:

Yeah, I’ve stopped using the GI map because I just find it doesn’t have as much information as some other tests, like I use Tiny Health Pro now, because they’ve got the full metagenomic sequencing, plus they have all the GI markers, and then the Gut Zoomer too. The Vibrant test has, like . . .

Reed Davis:

We do a lot of Zoomers.

Lindsey:

. . . so many more areas, yeah, and it has all the markers for gluten intolerance, and so many more inflammatory markers. It’s just so much more information now, so I think they just added neurotransmitters.

Reed Davis:

Yeah, that was called Tiny what?

Lindsey:

Tiny Health PRO. Yeah, I’ve been using them. They started with microbiome sequencing for babies and moms, and they have the full adult test. So, yeah, I like that, because you literally know the percentage of every bacteria in the gut, and how it’s breaking down, so it really gives you a good picture, like, yeah, maybe somebody’s overabundant in this particular species, but that is actually only 0.1% of their microbiome, as opposed to this thing that’s 13% of their microbiome, which is a whole different way of looking at it than the PCR, because you really know every single thing.

Reed Davis:

Yeah, well, thanks for that. Yeah, they do the vaginal microbiomes, yeah. So that’s, yeah, that’s great.

Lindsey:

Yeah, I like that one. Anyway, we’re running out of time, so tell people where they can find you and about the Functional Diagnostic Nutrition course.

Reed Davis:

Yeah. Let me, well, I teach this course called Functional Diagnostic Nutrition*. You’ve made it when you have your company’s initials on your shirt; that makes you important. So, let me look at my calendar to see if we made a special link just for your listeners.

Yes, so it’s fdntraining.com/perfectstool26*, and that’s in your honor. So, if your listeners and viewers would go there, we have a gift. It’s a free behind the scenes access to the lab methodology we do. It’s kind of cool. I don’t know what it’s worth, but it’s free and we won’t try to sell you anything. We just inform you, you make your own decisions about whatever you want to do. Thank you for recommending me to Zero Acre and to that Tiny Health, I have never heard of them, you just never know. I do see they do beta-glucuronidase too, that’s a good marker for, yeah. I’m happy to be here, Lindsey. Time sure went by fast.

Lindsey:

Nice to talk to you again.

Reed Davis:

That’s what happens when you’re having fun, right? Take care.

June 2, 2026June 2, 2026

The Science of Habits for Autoimmune Healing with Amy Behimer, PharmD

Adapted from episode 169 of The Perfect Stool podcast and edited for readability with Amy Behimer, PharmD, board-certified health and wellness coach and host of the podcast Autoimmune Health Secrets and Lindsey Parsons, EdD.

Lindsey: So, could you tell me about your journey with MS and where you are now?

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Absolutely, MS (multiple sclerosis), was my third autoimmune diagnosis. The first time I heard the word autoimmune, I was 17. I was in high school, and I started getting these white patches all over my skin, and I didn’t like the looks of it. I was a teenager, but didn’t think much of it. I went to pharmacy school, and I started to learn more about what was happening in the body, and how autoimmunity usually clusters, and if you have one, you have more. And so I started to think, oh goodness, was this skin condition just the first one?

And so next came a thyroid diagnosis, Grave’s disease, which was also autoimmune. And then I really started to get worried, and I had this impending doom, and I started to feel that something was not right. I was a runner, and so I would be running pretty far distances and I started to get some foot drop, which is where my right foot didn’t pick up quite as easily, and so there was a little bit of tripping happening, and I just ignored it for a little while, because, well, yeah, I’m running 20 miles, and so a lot of people said it’s not really normal to run 20 miles, so your body’s probably just reacting to that.

So I knew something was not right, and I started getting this hunch that maybe it could be multiple sclerosis, and so it was a bit of a challenge to get some physicians on board that maybe this could be it. I got the testing that I needed and ended up with that diagnosis at age 27 and to say that I was shook was an understatement, a massive understatement. It was quite a blow to what I thought my life was and could be. And so it’s been 14 years, I am turning 42 this year, and I have to say that’s been some of the most work-filled years of my life, but thankfully, you asked, where are you now? I’m at a place where I really am using every piece of this diagnosis as a reason that I can be healthier, that I can live a good life, and that it doesn’t need to define the direction of my emotional experience at all.

Lindsey: That’s great. So, I imagine, yeah, that must have been really devastating at such a young age to already have three autoimmune diseases. Did the other two go away or how did those two play out?

Amy Behimer, PharmD: I say they’re gone for the most part. The vitiligo has not spread. I have no active markers of any antibodies for the thyroid condition. I also had a fourth diagnosis at one point on biopsy. There was IBD, inflammatory bowel disease that didn’t look exactly like Crohn’s, didn’t look exactly like colitis, but it was IBD, is what it was diagnosed as, and we were a little stumped, the physician and I. But we now can see that that is also gone, and so I use it as a testament to the fact that these habits that we do, our lifestyle, our environment, this work that we are likely going to talk a lot about, can really not only prevent future diagnoses but also shape what happens to the ones you have and impact where they go from there. And so again, there’s no way to prove what changes what exactly, but why not tell the most empowering story? And I love that story, that these habits and this way of living are keeping the other ones at bay.

Lindsey: Yeah, so oftentimes autoimmune diseases are preceded by gut health issues and leaky gut. So you did mention in our intro call that you had had issues with constipation as a child and beyond, so I’m curious whether you addressed that, and what helped.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: My constipation journey is long and ongoing, really. So I remember going to a GI doctor when I was young, this was in the 80s. There weren’t a lot of pediatric specialists, but it was bad enough that I went to a GI doctor, and I used to have to drink mineral oil, and my siblings would see it there, they’d make fun of me, because it was terrible, but that was a part of it. Constipation, it’s still there.

I have experimented with just about everything, and I find different things that work at different times, and now for the most part, it is good, but sometimes I will get a bout of constipation, and I will have to look backwards and really be an investigator and say, what did I change, what threw this off quite a bit. I just flew in from four national parks in four days’ vacation with my mom, my aunt, and my cousin, and this may be TMI, but I’m guessing it’s not, because of your show and who you are.

But I was experiencing constipation, and so travel, that can happen, of course. I don’t have access to the amount of fibrous raw vegetables that I know my colon and my GI tract love and need, and I say the vacation was split into two. There were the two days I was constipated, and then there were the two days after, where I was relieved, and those national parks were more beautiful. I was more engaged, and so everybody on the trip was making fun of me, because I loved the national park that is one of the least visited in the country, and they’re like, I think that your lack of constipation is clouding your judgment, and I said, I don’t care, but I feel amazing.

Lindsey: Yeah. So what kinds of things have been helpful for you for constipation?

Amy Behimer, PharmD: The most recent one, and this is wild, and I’ve shared this with a couple people who have tried it, and it’s worked, and it’s a little bit interesting, but you know, vegetables and fiber are important, but my body responds very differently to different vegetables, different fiber at different times. And so kind of on accident, I was at a beach last year and I brought vegetables. I was the person eating raw vegetables on a beach, and people will at first say, what are you doing, and then they start eating some, and they’re like, okay, this feels kind of good. But I over-bought vegetables, and I ended up with way too many carrots, way too much broccoli, way too much cauliflower, and I didn’t want it to go to waste, so every afternoon I ate this massive plate.

And again, if you’re listening, I’ve built my way up to a high amount of vegetables, so I can take it from a bloating or comfort standpoint, but I kind of had this oversized plate of raw vegetables in the afternoon to eat these up, and I’ve never had better bowel movements. And so I’ve been trying to again just re-create that and really playing with what types, and definitely the cookedness. A lot of people say, well, eat cooked vegetables. Vegetables for me just don’t seem to register the same, and so I’m really experimenting with different things. Magnesium is a big piece of my story. Absolutely different types of magnesium, really finding that balance, which also helps with my MS, so it’s a good win-win. And another one that I have had some luck with is a buffered vitamin C. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with that.

Lindsey: Yeah, very, very common constipation cure. Yeah.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Yeah, so that one I do like. I have to say, I’ve done colonoscopies, I’ve done four or five in my life, and I am the person that will do an entire colonoscopy prep and I’m not going, so it may be some of your listeners as well, but whether you’ve done that or not, my bowels can take that, and so it’s some pretty extreme constipation, but the most effective thing that I have had, because I really try to use everything that’s not meds. I am a pharmacist that doesn’t love taking meds, and so, yeah, experimenting with those fruits and vegetables really has done wonders.

Lindsey: Yeah, I know that there’s definitely studies out there showing that certain amounts of fruit per day will increase the transit time, so I know the fruits in particular are great for constipation.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Yeah.

Lindsey: And kiwis, I think. Obviously and then things like prunes and such.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: I love it. Do you eat the kiwis with the skin?

Lindsey: Oh, I don’t. I don’t go in that direction. I am not prone to constipation.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Got it, got it. That’s funny.

Lindsey: So I am not eating the skin. But do you eat the skin?

Amy Behimer, PharmD: I do, and apparently America is one of the few countries that doesn’t, and so I eat it, and people again will look at me, and at first they’re like, what is Amy eating now? And then I encourage them, just try it, because I really think that the skin is where the magic is at. And with my clients, we’ll talk about what beliefs are driving our habits, and I grew up in a household where my mom, from when I was very young, constantly was saying, you need roughage, you need roughage. How many four or five year olds are worrying about their roughage intake? But I look at food and I’m like, how much roughage, how much scraping of my colon is this going to do, and it’s kind of how that belief came from my mom, and it’s one that has stuck, and I really value it, because I think it helps me.

Lindsey: Yeah, a lot of my knowledge about health comes from just having grown up in my household, and things I learned. And so, funny, now my son, he’ll go on to ChatGPT. He had a gut health issue, he got food poisoning, and he’s on ChatGPT asking what to do. I’m like, your mother is a gut health expert, why are you going to ChatGPT? I know what to do for you.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Have you met me? Yes. I heard it called once that I grew up in a poop positive household, and I was like, yes! And maybe it’s because I’m from a German background, and they are known to have more words for poop and defecation than many others, and so yeah, I can talk about poop all day.

Lindsey: Oh, yeah, we always were talking about that kind of stuff.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Well, hopefully you schooled him on how ChatGPT was no replacement for the wisdom of his mother.

Lindsey: You know, you can only do so much. Anyway, how is the typical American at keeping up with good lifestyle habits?

Amy Behimer, PharmD: The statistics are a little bit shocking. It’s 2.7% of Americans that are able to consistently over time keep up with the four basic habits, and the four basic habits that were used in this study are eating well, moving, not smoking, and maintaining a healthy body weight. And of course, what does eating well and moving mean, what are those thresholds? That is very variable and different, but I guess just ask yourself, am I eating how I want to be eating? Am I moving as much as I want to be moving?

That’s a self-report number, and so that is good to share, only to normalize that it’s not your fault if there’s something you want to be doing in your lifestyle habits and it feels hard. That is the reality for a lot of us, because we are not taught at a young age about roughage and about movement and about the things that we can use our brain for to change in a way that doesn’t feel like deprivation. So overall we’re not great, but I don’t want to say that in any sort of judgmental way, other than the flip side of that is we have a lot of room to feel really good because we have a lot of room to experiment with these different habits that we know can help our guts and our energy and all sorts of things.

Lindsey: Yeah, so why do you think maintaining good habits is so difficult for most people?

Amy Behimer, PharmD: The brain is only interested in three things. It’s called the motivational triad. It wants to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and it wants to conserve energy, which really means don’t change, stay the way you are. And so once we are aware of that, we can see how it has gotten us to where we are. It has kept us alive as a species, but in our modern world, where things that are pleasurable are immediately available to us in super concentrated doses, we can start to see, okay, maybe this isn’t quite normal, and so once we understand that we are working a little bit against our biology, and we find the strategies to do that, it becomes a whole lot easier and a whole lot clearer how to move past it and not get stuck in some of those ruts, because so many people know that they want to maybe be doing things differently, whether it’s scrolling on social media, or again back to exercise, or food, or anything that feels as though you’re doing it outside of your control. That’s likely what’s at play.

Lindsey: So I’m somebody who has pretty good habits during the work week. I get up at a good hour, I go to bed at a good hour, and I get up and I meditate with my husband, and then we do breath work before bed, and I exercise. I do that on the weekend too, but on the weekends those good habits, especially regarding what we do after we wake up and before we go to bed, kind of fall by the wayside. So, how might you coach me about doing better on the weekends?

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Oh, I would ask you about what you think needs to be better. Is it a problem that the more structured routine or habits exist on the weekdays and not the weekends?

Lindsey: I would say it’s not a problem, given there’s only two days in the weekend, but I’m a little bit worried about what retirement is going to look like, and whether I’m just going to turn into a complete slug who can’t even fit three meals in because I’m getting up so late.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: You know what, it’s funny that that is normal to think, oh my god, this is all going to go to crap, but I imagine if I had to advance and peek into what that looks like, that may happen for a little bit, but your body, again, you’re a creature of habit, so thankfully you likely have a set point where you’ll be like, whoa, I really need this thing, and this feels good.

But I think that you highlight a couple of things. There are some people, and maybe you’re listening, and I’m kind of in that camp too, where the research shows it’s somewhere in the 7 to 8% of people who decide what they want to do, and they find a why that is so powerful that it overrides all the things that I just talked about, and they just change their habits. And they can just do it, and they can just follow through on it, and that could be because the feel-good benefits are pretty immediate, so they stick to it.

But most people are not in that camp, and so one thing that’s often missing from plans is the plan to rest, is the plan to be a little bit of a slug maybe one day a week, or to include some of those joyful moments, because if you plan for the pleasure and you plan for the rest and the things you’re afraid are going to take over your life, then when you go to do the thing that feels a little bit tougher, you can remind your brain really lovingly, oh, I have rest planned in, I have joy planned in, I have things that my body is craving right now. I have it in my big picture plan, so I can get back to doing this, because I know that I’ve created a balance with that. I’m not sure if that makes sense.

Lindsey: Yeah, yeah, no, that does make sense, because I was gonna say, my other bad habit that I can’t seem to break is eating dessert, and mind you, it’s all sugar-free, made with allulose, gluten-free, super healthy. But nevertheless, eating dessert before bed, around nine, nine-thirty, that kind of thing. I’m not doing it every night. I used to, literally my entire life I used to, but now it’s probably only two or three days a week that I might do that. Yeah, it’s still not great for me.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Yeah, what do you think helped you go from every night to two or three nights a week?

Lindsey: Well, it was seeing how it impacted my sleep, because inevitably, if I’m eating and drinking that late, I’m going to have to get up and go to the bathroom, and then I’m not going to go back to sleep for about an hour and a half, and the cost-benefit analysis just wasn’t worth it.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Yeah, yeah, you were able to tie it to a consequence that was worth it.

Lindsey: Yeah, and in some cases too, I would, just right after dinner, eat dessert, so then I wouldn’t be craving it later. I would just be done eating at an earlier hour, so that also stopped it. But for the most part, I just ate too much at dinner to be able to fit in a dessert, so then I’ll just go without it entirely in that scenario.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Yeah, you’re kind of working in some strategies naturally to shift. But the main thing, when we’re eating something that we don’t want to be eating, or we’re eating more of something than we want to be eating, I talk about what’s happening with that. We have a world where, again, this sugar, or sometimes it’s ultra-processed foods. For me, it was, I call it small, crunchy things in bags, where you really lose all sort of regulation, and it can make you mad when you realize that it’s designed to do that, right? It’s designed to hijack our dopamine reward system to make us feel, oh my gosh, I need more of that.

And so one of the first things we do is decide what the goal is. Is the goal not to eat dessert before bedtime or not to eat the small crunchy things in bags, or is the goal to not even want to eat it? Because it’s two separate strategies. If you’re trying to just not eat the thing, you can get it out of the house. You can, if there are any Sex and the City fans out there, Miranda one time took cake and put it in the trash and put soap on it. But when we do those things our desire for it is just kind of building. And so the alternate approach with a totally different strategy is: how do I turn down the desire for things that I know I don’t want to be eating that much of?

And so when we do that, then we start to get into the good stuff, which is where we’re looking at what are we thinking and feeling when we get to that point where we are breaking our own plan, or it feels as though we’re acting against ourselves in terms of what we know we want in the big picture. And that is where it gets fun. I say fun loosely, because sometimes it means: what am I avoiding in that moment when I keep eating? And I’m probably avoiding feeling bored or stressed or deprived. And asking ourselves, oh, so the cost of getting this outcome I want, which is eating less of this thing, is to really sit and feel that emotion that isn’t super comfortable. When we get on board to do that, that’s when we start to dial down that dopamine reaction, and we start to resensitize ourselves to the more natural joys of dopamine, and the ways that we can experience dopamine that’s not as hijacked by these food companies that are designed to keep us coming back for more. And man, are they effective!

Lindsey: Oh, yeah, I mean, the crunchy things in bags, it’s funny because I used to never eat tortilla chips, that was just not something I was interested in, never touched them, and then somehow I’ve developed a taste for them over the years. I think it’s because the art of the tortilla chip has been fine-tuned to something so spectacular.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: You are so right. There’s this meme that says, so what happens, do they run out of tortilla chips? Do I die? How do I stop eating these? And that’s so true. And you’re right, it’s just that perfect profile, and so really learning how to dial down that desire is such a skill that we can use anywhere, because if you think about it, we have an urge to do something, and we allow that urge to be there without reacting to it. And the same skill applies.

Let’s move over to another area of our health habits that we talked about, which is movement. Well, let’s say we planned to do a 30-minute at-home video, or we plan to go to an exercise class. There’s going to be that moment where you’re going to have the urge not to go, and so it’s the same skill of overcoming the very primal urges we have for what we want in the moment that is competing with what we want most.

And so that’s the good news, we can practice this in any habit. And same thing, so many people, me included, have habit goals related to being on social media or being attached to our phone, and these things again pull us in in such a way because that’s what they’re designed to do. And so having an urge to grab your phone is something that instead of reacting to, instead of saying, oh, this is just the way it is, or having to throw your phone into the ocean, how can I be there with that urge and not answer it?

Lindsey: It’s funny, because we had this unit on advertising when I was in elementary school, and I swear that that inoculated me against advertising for my entire life. They talked about all the different ways they entice you, is it food, is it sex, is it celebrity. And so I’ve always felt inoculated to advertising, and maybe that carried over into social media, because I’ll pull up Facebook, and now of course they have these Instagram reels, or the stories or whatever that come on Facebook, and I’ll start to watch one because it just pops up, or I’m going to post to Instagram for my podcast so it’ll pop up, and I’ll start to watch it, and I’m just thinking, what is this stupidity? Why am I wasting time? I literally will never make it through even a single reel before I just think, ridiculous waste of time, this is probably made up, it’s probably AI, who cares?

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Yeah, that’s really interesting, and again, back to the mindset. So your belief or your thought was likely planted by that advertising class, that this is a waste of time. And so it’d be cool to fast forward and see what happens with your son living in that house. Our habits are so contagious, and they’re the only form of medical intervention that affect future generations. So people that you don’t even know, potential kids, grandkids, all this, will have a change because of the things you do. And so it’s kind of cool because you likely, just by sharing that thought out loud, your son may be hearing it the way I heard roughage, and he may feel the same way because he’s borrowing that thought from you. And those are what I call the inner habits. How are we thinking and feeling throughout all day that are driving what we’re doing or not doing? Because when we’re willing to go to the root of it and start playing in that land, it can feel a whole lot easier, instead of just looking at what we are eating, how we are moving, which are the outer habits.

Lindsey: Yeah, I’m not sure I succeeded with my son in terms of food and that sort of thing, he’s a little bit of a carbohydrate addict. Social media, I think I was a complete success. He didn’t get a cell phone until he was in ninth grade, and he does not use social media by choice. I didn’t force that on him, but by choice, and I mean, of course, I may have played podcasts in the background about the harms of social media and how it destroys you. He just plays video games, but you can’t win them all.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Yeah, but you planting those seeds made it more natural for him. I think that’s really cool to see. I call it the ripple effect of everything we do. It’s not just about us, it’s about someone on the beach picking up a carrot stick for the first time, and being like, wow, you can eat fresh vegetables on the beach. Which doesn’t mean that’s all I eat. I mean, I definitely am human, and have my planned indulgences, I guess we should say, and that’s the cool thing about the dopamine reward system. If I plan to eat a couple handfuls of chips, and then I follow my plan, it doesn’t have the same kicking up or reinforcing that, oh, if I tell her I need it, then she’ll give me more chips. It’s just following my plan. And so having those things that you want to still have in your life, but making it a part of a well-balanced plan, is a secret that not enough people get a handle on.

Lindsey: Yeah, so why do the gut protocols that look perfect on paper often fail in real life?

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Oh my goodness. So protocols in general, anytime we are trying to take one-sided advice or one-way advice, right? So if we’re reading something, if it’s on paper, if it’s on a podcast with someone you’re not interacting with, even if you’re listening to me here, there’s some risk of this, but if you’re hearing about what to do, and it’s only one way, it’s not taking into account you. And I call it my secret sauce of autoimmune health, or secret sauce of frankly living a good life with autoimmune disease, and there’s the science, which I know you are well versed in, and your listeners are as well, but all the science in the world will fall flat if we don’t bring in our self, which is ingredient number two. So again, me and the way my gut responds to broccoli may be different than how it responds in your gut, and so we have to bring ourselves into the equation.

The third one is strategy, so again, sometimes we have really good information, but if we can’t follow through on it for long enough to see how something really impacts us, then we can’t really see if it’s really working, because we maybe have not given it a fair shake. And so having real strategies to take out and apply in your real life is so important.

And simplicity is the fourth ingredient, because man, when things get complicated, we just get frozen. But there’s so much we could be doing, and you fall off in one area, and it can really be counterproductive.

And the last one is support, because support can be the difference between reaching a goal and not, and so always making sure that we normalize that doing hard things is something that support can make easier.

Lindsey: Yeah, it’s funny that even when I’m working with people, and you know, they have my email, I make it clear that I’m there to respond to emails. They might start something, and then something doesn’t quite work, or something disagrees with them, and then they fall off completely. And then I check in three weeks later, and they’re like, oh, I haven’t done any of this because this thing happened. I’m saying, well, why didn’t you email me?

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Yeah.

Lindsey: It’s funny because people feel guilty, as if they’re letting me down. I’m like, it’s your body, you let yourself down. I’m here to serve you, I’m not here to chastise you or make you feel bad. We’re trying to fix you, but you know it’s a joint project.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Or maybe that sneaky thought of, oh, I don’t want to bother her. And one thing that’s really helped, I coach in a group, I have one-on-one as well, but for the most part, the club is where the magic happens in terms of the group coming in, learning this. And I love telling my clients that it’s one thing to ask for yourself, and yes, I want you to ask for yourself, but please know that when you ask, you are giving a gift to every single person, because they likely are that person that wants to ask but doesn’t want to ask. And so again, the power and the research on just being witnessed when we do these things and when we do hard things is amazing. And so I love that reminder that sometimes it’s not for you, it’s for other people, and you get to benefit when other people ask your question too.

Lindsey: Yeah, yeah, no, I always thought it would be fun to do some sort of a group coaching thing, but gut health is one of those areas where not everybody wants to share all that kind of stuff with each other, so it’s just never quite worked out. So I’ve always stayed one on one. But yeah, so you’ve got a group that meets regularly, or is it new people coming in and out, or is it a set period of time?

Amy Behimer, PharmD: It’s a membership, so I really love and try to make it appealing to join for the year, just because, realistically, we’re learning these skills, we are learning how to work with our brains, work with our bodies, and change habits that we’ve had our whole life. And so I love the space to be able to say, we’re not in a rush, we get to experiment, we get to do it. You can join monthly, but for the year it is amazing. And yes, we meet every single week, we just make it a habit that we love to tap back in and set goals. I mean, it’s a chance for people to say, what am I working on, what is something that I am working towards, and not look at that as, oh my gosh, I have to do this, but wow, I get to do this. I get to keep finding new ways to feel better, and new ways to think, and new ways to explore how I’m feeling.

And I love that live interaction, because the best teaching I ever do is in response to a question that somebody I’m talking to has, and that is proved out time and time again. It’s as though I can think I have an agenda or a plan, but if I just pause and open it up and say, what’s on your mind, because if we are listening for an answer to a question that we have, we are so much more open to learning. And so yeah, that human interaction, in the world of AI, I will never give up human interaction, being together, sharing our emotions, and sharing in real time.

Yeah, the membership’s been up and running for three or four years, and I’m so grateful that I had a good idea, because we have such good research on what helps, but a good idea on what components this membership really needs, and you know it just plays out year after year. It is nice to have a habit to come back and really take time out of your day or your week to look at what you need and what your future looks like.

Lindsey: And is that a group of people with different autoimmune diseases or people with MS?

Amy Behimer, PharmD: It is. There’s about 12 to 15 different diagnoses represented. I recently started asking, when people join, their diagnosis, if they want to share, just because I’m curious, I’d love to know what’s represented. But that’s the coolest thing, autoimmunity brings us together, but after that, we just become people who are working to learn new skills and want to celebrate each other and want to be held accountable and want to learn new things. And it’s really cool how the diagnoses don’t even matter, you know. I have some people training for half marathons and mountain races, and I have some people that are very limited on mobility, but we’re all wanting to think, feel, and do better. It’s just different versions for each of us, and when we can normalize that in that space together, it’s really something special.

Lindsey: So, how does living with autoimmune disease change the way that we should think about gut health, about energy sustainability, lifestyle changes, and that sort of thing?

Amy Behimer, PharmD: So much of the root causes can start in the gut. The gut can be such a place for frustration, but on the flip side, it can be such a place for victories too, and for successes. So, so many of the things, when we look at, will this be good for my autoimmunity? You could replace it with, will this be good for my gut? I can’t imagine something that doesn’t meet one that’s also going to meet the other. And so if our symptoms are gut related, I think that can be a really good measure. I call it a measure that matters, when we go to experiment on a new habit or a new goal. If you experience gut symptoms, then what a beautiful thing to directly tie what you’re doing to how your gut is feeling. It can be a cause of autoimmunity, but it can also be an effect, because we can be stressed from autoimmunity.

So it could be either a vicious cycle that pulls us down, or it could be a beautiful cycle that lifts us up when we start taking care of it. One of the things I always point to is this term called autoimmune health, and that was born when I first saw the definition of health after I was diagnosed, and it said the absence of symptoms or disease. I was thinking, okay, so I’m never going to be healthy again? I have symptoms, I have a diagnosis that likely isn’t going anywhere, and so I had to redefine it. And so I redefined it as the health that I can create because of this diagnosis. And gut health is one of those. If I didn’t have the body screaming at me with this autoimmunity, I think I never would have taken this different approach to how I’m thinking, feeling, and inhabiting my body, and I think my gut health is one of the most impacted because, yeah, it’s just sitting there waiting to be loved on.

Lindsey: Yeah, I have a client with Parkinson’s. And constipation is one thing that precedes Parkinson’s by many years now, and that’s been established in the research. And yeah, I mean, I don’t know about any connection in particular with constipation and MS, but I know if you have toxins sitting in your colon and not getting pushed out in good time, that is a precursor to problems. So I’m sure gut health is super important.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Yeah, and something that I work with a lot of people on. If any of my MS brothers and sisters are listening, they’re probably nodding, yes, we are constipated. There’s a lot of that. Yeah. So, how do food, rest, stress, movement, and mindset work together to support gut health? And what happens when we focus on just one in isolation? Oh, I have a framework, it’s called the Habit Hub for Autoimmune Health, and it was born out of necessity, as all good things are. As I was sorting through my education in functional medicine and kind of digging into this new approach after I was diagnosed, and as I realized I need to help other people do this, this framework naturally came together, and just has been such an obvious balanced approach to all the different things we could be doing.

The six spokes, you kind of rattled them off, but mindset, food, movement, rest and relaxation is number four, number five is connection or relationships, and number six is good stresses or challenges that we take on in the name of growth. And the good thing about these six areas is that every habit that you think you could make, so you’re probably reading books if you’re looking for answers to feeling better, you’re listening to podcasts, you’re listening to this, you’re on social media watching these reels that are “do this, do that,” having a framework to see where it all fits in is a science-backed way to help make sense of the information and not be overwhelmed by it.

So when we know that we are going to get to each of these areas in due time, it helps calm our brain down and say, okay, but what am I working on next? And for me, I went all in on food when I was first diagnosed, I went all in on movement next, and it was a bumpy ride. I mean, it’s a hub, but if you go all in on one and neglect the others, it can feel like a bumpy ride, and so it really is about zooming out and seeing what is a balanced approach to ensure that we are pulling the levers from these different areas in a way that is sustainable. Because any habit that we can do for 30 days, or muscle our way through, we want this to become who we are. We want this to go from a goal to a habit to become who we are, and it’s got to work in real life. It’s got to be something that we’re not trying to get to the end of, but instead it’s just something we enjoy doing.

Lindsey: Yeah, I imagine there’s a lot of people who are diagnosed with autoimmune diseases who are not meeting goals in a lot of those areas. It must hit them like a ton of bricks that I’m supposed to go from this standard American diet, no movement, a lot of TV, a lot of social media, a lot of that kind of thing, and then somehow just fix all these things all at once.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Yeah.

Lindsey: I know, when I was doing a lot more coaching on lifestyle habits, it was baby steps, it was, what is one small step you can take in the right direction. Is that the sort of approach that you work with?

Amy Behimer, PharmD:: Yeah, so I essentially became a habit nerd, and honestly, best friends with these researchers and experts, they don’t know it, they’ve never met me, they don’t know me, but I mean I’ve poured through their books, their podcasts, their science. These are researchers, and the scientist in me loves that we can test something out, and then it’s reproducible. When we say something’s proven in the research, that means this works again, and we can go to this group over here, and it works again. And so it gave me the confidence, before I had all this evidence of helping people change in a way that feels good, it gave me confidence, because the research was there.

And so what I’ve done is I’ve taken from these various people, and I can list all their names, I’m madly in love with them, where the overlap is. I could see, okay, this person calls it this, this person does this, but for the most part, these are just words on a page to a lot of people. Everybody, I don’t think I’ve ever met somebody who hasn’t read or bought Atomic Habits, which is a book by James Clear. But if the information stays on the page and it’s not again put in real life, it’s not doing us much good.

So I have taken all that, and it is in what I call the ABC Habit Playbook, and there are 20 plays. These are the strategies pulled from the research that we mix and match, and we use on any goal that we have. And sometimes, I grew up in a sports family, so I have a lot of sports analogies, different opponents may need different strategies, different plays. And so we have this playbook that we keep coming back to. Maybe we try this one, Trust in the Tiny is one of those plays, which is kind of what you mentioned. Some people call it the two-minute rule, some people call it tiny habits. Trust in the Tiny is pulling in that mindset piece, it’s not just doing the tiny thing, but it’s trusting that the tiny thing really is the answer, because our actions are evidence of our belief. So if we believe that two minutes of exercise today is what I need to get moving, then I’ll do it. Or if I can trust that adding one vegetable to my plate over time is going to be the answer to shifting to a way of eating that feels better, then we would do it.

And so the playbook is really my weapon, and I love to teach people not only how to use it on their own, they start to use it and try it, and they bring the more complicated things to coaching calls to talk about. Or sometimes I’m saying, did we consider this play? It’s always at play, it’s just bringing it to the forefront in a way that is so tangible that we’re not going to learn a bunch of things or read a bunch of things. I’m going to teach you a bit of science, give you some examples, and then get you out in life. Practice it on that habit that you’re working on, so that you can really start to see the evidence of it working.

Lindsey: Yeah, I think I’m sort of within that small percentage of people. I’m kind of a willpower machine. I exercised regularly my entire life, and I’ll take a week or two of vacation and I won’t be doing it, just walking, and I’ll come back, and it’s Monday. Of course, I’m going to the gym. It’s Monday, Wednesday, Saturday, that’s what I do.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: And I’m kind of in your camp, which is really fascinating that I ended up doing this work, because a lot of people I talk to who are similar will say, what do you mean? Why can’t people just do it? If you decide to do it. And I kind of went the other way, and I want to get in the trenches with them and really look people in the eye and say, I really believe there’s that image of the decision tree, did it work yet? You can go yes, okay, keep going, but if you say no, it didn’t work yet, okay, keep going. We’ll try a different strategy, we’ll try a different play.

I never think that it’s not going to happen for you, and that’s the beauty of coaching, is that I can lend you my belief in this playbook and in you as you build yours up, because everybody needs to build up their belief that it’s possible for them to feel better. That’s a huge root of a lot of us, I’m just not consistent, or I am just a person who, insert whatever thing that keeps us feeling stuck, or these things can’t really work for me, I can’t really feel better. And I want to lend the belief that oh my goodness, both of those things do not have to be true, and help you build that belief for yourself and find evidence in your own life.

Lindsey: So do you ever have people who come to you who have a loved one who is sick and they’re not doing what they need to be doing for their own health, and they’re trying to help them want to even desire to live better?

Amy Behimer, PharmD: That’s a good question. I get comments on the podcast, I have a podcast called Autoimmune Health Secrets, and I will from time to time get comments, I started listening because my sister has this, or my husband has this. So I know that there are those loved ones out there. I’ve definitely had people show up as couples or as families on calls when they’re trying to decide if they want to join the club. One couple, this is a little different than what you mentioned, but one couple, they were on for the consult, and it was revealed that one person was living with one diagnosis, one person was living with another, both autoimmune. And again, the research shows that the most effective unit of change is the household. And I said, well, this doesn’t make sense. Listen, if you join, you join for free. I was looking at the husband and wife, and they are two of the most active, amazing members, and you join as a household, so you only have to pay once. And that offer still exists. I love it.

I’ve had other people whose spouses or even their kids will come on a call. But what I would say for anybody who’s going through that is that you have to go first. I can only be a coach for somebody who really wants to come in and do it, because it just doesn’t work. That force, or just giving more facts, or trying to instill fear, is just not an effective way to change. And so I would say to anybody, you go first. That ripple effect is really magnetic. When you start looking at your role in your own health, it’s kind of contagious. Other people can’t help but take notice and start to get curious. It may take a little bit of time, but they do start to come around and ask what you’re eating over there.

Lindsey: So one of the areas that you were mentioning that’s part of your rubric is relationships and connection, and that’s one where I think people really want to have more of, but are finding it difficult. Are there any tips or tricks for building up connections, especially friendships? I think nowadays it’s a little harder because people are so buried in their phones.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Yeah, that’s so true. I use the same tool that I use for everything, which is habits. So if you think of relationships, the way we want to show up, we want to show up on autopilot, we want to show up regularly, we want to show up consistently for these people. So that could look like scheduling. We use the playbook.

Our goal is to probably feel more connected, or our goal is to see this friend more often. So then we start experimenting with what we think could help us get there, and then we use the playbook to make that a more habitual thing. And sometimes people have this thought of, it should be effortless, or I shouldn’t need to put it in my habit tracker to call this person, or to have this intimacy with my husband, or whatever, but why not? Why not put relationships, which are a key to happiness and show up over and over again in the research, as an important thing worth tracking and worth problem-solving for?

I mean, I am an aunt, I’m not a mom, but I’m a fierce aunt that loves her nephews and niece so much, and I started when my oldest nephew was young. I started some habits that are really coming to fruition almost two decades later, and I can see it’s because I made this a habit. And habits can be daily, weekly, monthly, annually, but they are consistent, and they’ve allowed a connection and a relationship that is worth it. They may not pay off immediately. Some of them, I think, absolutely will.

Let’s say somebody that makes you laugh, you make it a, you know, two times a week I’m going to call this person for nothing other than to hear their voice, and I’m going to track it, and I’m going to make this an important thing, that can pay off immediately. But some things may be a longer burn, but there is nothing more worth it.

Lindsey: Yeah, so is this putting it in your calendar, call this friend on a certain day?

Amy Behimer, PharmD: For sure. That’s a strategy from the playbook, commit to your calendar. So that would be one that we could pull in. There are so many other things, making a plan with people, having people on your support squad, all sorts of things. Yeah, committing to your calendar is a huge one. Never leaving a friend’s date without setting up the next one. Sometimes that’s a good one, sometimes it’s eight months in the future because our lives are that busy, but who cares? That eight months is going to be here in a flash.

Lindsey: It’s funny because I have this thing where if I ask them to do something again after we just saw each other, they’re going to be like, why do you want to see me again so soon? But I guess I wouldn’t think that if somebody said the same to me, I’d be really happy. Oh, they want to see me again.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Yeah, totally. They’d be like, heck yes, heck yes. Sometimes for my connection habit, I always say, let’s start with one or two goals, right? Especially at the beginning, if you’re overwhelmed. But once you start to get a rhythm, I always have one kind of habit goal in each of these six spokes. And so sometimes I will do, for my connections spoke, what I’ll do is I’ll say to my husband at the beginning of the month, I’ll say, what is something that you would like me to do to make your life easier, what’s a habit I could make or break to help you in some way, just from a place of love. And the first time, he’s saying, oh, I don’t want you to do anything, and I’m saying, no, really, I want to do something. And he goes, god, please turn off the basement light when you go down. And it kind of comes out, and I’m thinking, okay, listen, this could make him happy, this could be something that I can do. And so I will get out my playbook, and think, how do I break this habit of leaving these lights on? And I include that in the connection spoke, because it just feels good to do something for somebody else.

And so that one came from, I used to leave my paper towel on my plate, and it would get kind of icky and nasty, and my husband would always say, put this in the trash. And one day he said, you’re so good at this, and I go, sorry, I just forgot, and he goes, you claim to be so good at habits, why don’t you break the habit? And I was thinking, oh, this will be fun. I am going to practice what I preach, and I’m going to use my own strategies, and honestly, that habit was broken pretty instantly. So sometimes it’s fun.

Lindsey: You threw out the gauntlet. I’ll throw that napkin away!

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Watch me.

Lindsey: Watch me throw it away.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: This is my life’s work, so clearly I need to figure this out. So yeah, it’s fun to use the playbook on things. One month I had it as a habit to do the two steps to get things ready to make his coffee, just little things. Yeah, relationships. And we have fun with it, because people think I have good relationships, and I’m saying, oh no, but let’s become great. Let’s become known for something, that’s my favorite thing.

Lindsey: Yeah. So, okay, help me with this habit. I have a very bad habit. I’m very detail-oriented, and everything is supposed to be done a very particular way in the kitchen.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: I’m married to you. Yeah, you are my husband.

Lindsey: Okay, great. So I tend to be critical when things are not done the way I think they should be done, and I’m also sort of an extrovert, so I speak before I think. So I’m just a constant flow of critical feedback, which is not great for any relationship, as you can imagine. How can I fix this habit?

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Those are two separate ones. Let’s go with the first one. And likely, there is a play from the playbook I’m going to pull out called Go to the Root. Go to the Root is acknowledging that there are inner habits, we have a thought or a belief that is driving what we’re doing. So I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there is some version of a belief at the root of that, that my way is the right way.

Lindsey: Of course, without question.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: So if you’re believing that, if you’re thinking that, then always, if someone’s not doing it your way, that will be rubbing up against your core belief. So the first question I would ask you is, are you willing to let go of that belief, challenge that belief, or wiggle it loose a little bit to get to this thing that you say you want, this goal?

Lindsey: This is challenging because I’m objectively correct in most of the things. Cooking, for example, washing vegetables before you eat them. I’m objectively correct that that’s the better choice than not washing a non-organic vegetable.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Well, only because, a little bit, there are people that don’t wash their vegetables, and they are living just fine. We could find all these reasons, but what if we just wiggle it loose a little bit? We don’t have to go to, wow, you’re right.

Lindsey: Maybe I might not have a crunchy salad if you don’t thoroughly wash it.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Yeah, possible. So that one can be tough. But I’ll give you one that really helped me, because I’m married to you, my husband is you, and one thing that I think has saved me is three little words: we’re different by design. How are our differences our superpower? And I don’t know if “different by design” lands for you as much, but what if our differences are also what brought us together? We just want to find a version that, when we think my way is the right way, we redirect our brain to something that gets us out of that righteous feeling that needs to be critiqued, and just allows us to be curious. What is he thinking when he’s not washing the vegetables? It allows us to shift our energetic state into one that maybe doesn’t need to say the thing. So I wonder, what about your husband? Tell me something about him that is different, and thank goodness it’s different.

Lindsey: He’s very laid back and not critical. He never tells me what to do or what I’m doing wrong or that sort of thing.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Yeah, and so it could be something like, you know what, I want to pay him back the favor. So you see that there’s one right way, but you don’t want to say the criticism. Maybe try on: ooh, I can give him this little gift that he gives me all the time. How does that feel?

Lindsey: That’s good. That feels good.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Okay, because finding thoughts this way, when we go to the root, I offer some, but it always has to be one you try on. And I saw your body language shift a little bit, you’re thinking, oh, that feels good. Yeah. And then just trust in the tiny, and it’s those little repetitions. Does that mean now you’re going to walk around the kitchen and be fine with it? No, but you keep redirecting that very human brain. You build a new neural pathway that, instead of habitually going to you’re doing it wrong, it goes to, oh, maybe it’s okay if it goes this way, maybe it doesn’t need to be this way. We find the versions that feel true and that we want to practice and lean into.

And then one day, after you’ve been practicing it, what we would do is that would be your goal for the whole month, and you wouldn’t forget about it, because you’d be practicing it, you’d be coming back to it, you’d be finding all the evidence that it’s a good thing. And one day you may notice that you go to that thought first. That day, let me tell you, is the coolest thing, because you just proved to yourself that you can change how you think or what you believe. And that is just, I remember one of the first times that happened for me, and every time I get to see that for a client, I’m thinking, oh my god, this is why I do what I do. It’s awesome.

Lindsey: Awesome. Any final parting thoughts before we get off?

Amy Behimer, PharmD: Oh my goodness. I don’t know, I feel we danced a little bit everywhere. I love that you put me on the spot with a little bit of coaching. And no, I’m just grateful to you and all your expertise on the gut, because, man, we need it. But final thoughts, I guess, would be if anybody wants to calm the overwhelm, so we talked about how there are so many things we could do. One way to get started, I have a free quiz. It’s seven questions, it takes three minutes or less, and it will, pulling in what we know about the science, give you a result on one of these habits that we talked about, one of these areas. And you can trust, oh, let me just start here. And so not only do you get what the habit is, then you’ll also hear from me on some of these strategies to make it happen. And yeah, I just encourage everybody to use focus as their friend and just start with one, and really learn how to make that a habit, because that’s a skill that’s going to serve you for the rest of your life in all these different areas.

Lindsey: And where can people find you?

Amy Behimer, PharmD: I have a podcast, Autoimmune Health Secrets, of course. I’m coaching inside the club, and I am on Instagram at Amy Behimer Coaching, and the link to the quiz is on my website, which is www.amybehimercoaching.com.

Lindsey: Thank you so much for being here and for sharing all this great knowledge and coaching me on my terrible habits. I look forward to fixing this problem.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: I love it. I can’t wait to hear what your husband says the first time he doesn’t get corrected.

Lindsey: Well, I think it’ll accumulate over time.

Amy Behimer, PharmD: I love it.

May 20, 2026May 20, 2026

Reversing Crohn’s and Colitis Naturally: Root Cause Healing with Josh Dech

Adapted from episode 168 of The Perfect Stool podcast and edited for readability with Josh Dech, Holistic Nutritionist and Physician’s consultant and Lindsey Parsons, EdD.

Lindsey:

So would you like to start with your gut health story, and what got you interested in this topic?

Josh Dech:

Oh, boy, sure. Let’s just get deep real fast. Well, I’ve had gut issues my entire life, and really, it’s been my entire life, since probably grade school. So if I haven’t gone a single day, or if I don’t go a single day without talking about poop, it feels a little bit weird. So I’m glad we’re doing this. So it always had this nervous belly. It was something that came up if I had to go to a competition, I was always in sports, I’d have to use a bathroom beforehand.

And it was just in my household. My mom had gut issues. My dad had gut issues, and I went to the doctor. They said, yep, it’s IBS. It’s genetic. I just kind of dealt with it. Nobody told me anything otherwise. And it really hit a critical mass, building up over the years. I was in my teens. I had acne all over my body, my back, my neck, my chest, down my arms, on my wrists. It was a big mess. I had, geez, joint pain and all kinds of stuff, you name it, brain fog, severe ADHD.

And then right around my mid 20s, early mid 20s, things hit a critical mass, and I was having 15 bowel movements a day, 10-minute transit times. I was dealing with blood and mucus. And I was actually a strength athlete at the time, and I was using anabolic steroids. So I was artificially larger than I should be, but I was 216 pounds when I got sick. I dropped under 170 and I just felt atrocious.

I couldn’t lift I mean, 30 pounds was heavy for me, getting out of bed, there was anxiety and panic attacks and extreme depression, you name it. So after watching my mom do two bowel surgeries and mesh and gallbladder removal and the works and having gone through it, I figured that was just my fate. But long and short, I got some help, and I started studying the gut, and I realized this is a fixable thing.

That’s really the summary of it all. And I ended up healing my gut to the place where I used to have a teaspoon of ice cream I’m in the bathroom. Now I could eat a liter and not even a fart, like my gut’s great. It’s bulletproof. So it’s been really amazing to see what is possible. And from there, it just opened this whole door/window of possibility that nobody had told me before, and I just felt like I needed to tell the world about it. And here we are.

Lindsey:

So who did you find that was able to help you? Was it a functional medicine person? A naturopath?

Josh Dech:

Yeah, I found some functional practitioners. The naturopaths I’ve seen, unfortunately, weren’t able to help much and to no detriment of their own, it just wasn’t their specialty. But I actually found some colleagues of mine who just understood gut health. So I started knocking on that door and getting some help from them dealing with basic stuff. The liver and bile. Diet was rarely talked about. I was eating Captain Crunch cereal because it fit my macros, but everyone told me about calories. No one told me about chemicals, and so it was just a whole different transition to pulling out all the infection. There was mold and parasites and massive amounts of Candida, and my liver was congested, and all these things that led to me being sick, that just regular people at the gym, colleagues of mine, personal trainers, like, oh yeah, I can help with that. And they did.

Lindsey:

Yeah, awesome. Well, I’m glad you found help.

Josh Dech:

You and me both.

Lindsey:

Yeah. So you and I had a pre-interview call soon after I had gotten the results of an expanded IBD panel that had the AMCA antibodies elevated, which was maybe the second hint that there might be something more than just post-infectious IBS going on with me. And I haven’t had any other further confirmation of that, because my last colonoscopy was two years ago, and I’m not doing one again. Fortunately, I have no pain, no diarrhea, no blood or mucus in my stool, no other symptoms other than occasional bloating. So thankfully, anyway, but I did want to get into this expanded IBD panel and what it means, because that was something we had discussed, and the other antibodies on the test are the gASCA, ACCA, ALCA and Atypical pANCA. So can you tell us more about what those different antibodies mean?

Josh Dech:

Yeah. So antibodies, all they come up as is your body trying to protect you from something. So the most common one you’re going to see in there, it’s going to be 60 to 80% say upwards of 80% is that pANCA antibody. You’re talking about Crohn’s disease. It might be 20-25% it’s not as common, but it stands for Peri nuclear anti neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody, which sounds like a big, complicated thing, but it actually works against components inside the neutrophil.

So you got five types of white blood cells. The most common in bowel disease is going to be the neutrophil, and that’s where you get your calprotectin number from. The more neutrophils in the area, the higher the level of calprotectin protein being produced, like a car in a parking lot running its engine or revving or idling; it’s producing exhaust, and you measure the air and go look how many cars there are. You do the same. You measure the protein. That’s how much neutrophils. So it’s a pretty simple measurement for this pANCA. What it’s doing is attacking what’s inside the neutrophil.

Why would it do that? Well, neutrophils operate kind of like Pac Man. It’s called phagocytosis. They walk out, walk out, walk out, and they eat. And when they eat, they try to digest. But if your body can’t digest, it needs help, it sends in the antibody. And so this is where we see these antibodies coming up. And we go, look, you have antibodies, it’s this autoimmune condition. Well, pANCA is not an auto antibody. It’s not attacking your own tissue.

And if we can say, well, it looks like it’s attacking these white blood cells, but it’s actually attacking what’s in the white blood cell, is it really attacking you, or are you simply, or your cells, your white blood cells, simply standing in the way of what your body’s trying to handle? So they’re not actual auto antibodies, in the sense they don’t attack yourself. And this is a big misconception in the world of bowel disease. We say it’s this autoimmune condition. Show me the auto antibodies. They’re not attacking me. So it’s all a big, a big scam, if you will.

What were the other antibodies you said you found there?

Lindsey:

Oh, well, the ones that were elevated on my panel were the AMCA, which I guess that they’re all part of the pANCA, those four, maybe? Is that the way it works?

Josh Dech:

That one is, so it’s a little bit different. So the AMCA, this is an Anti-Mannobioside, if I’m pronouncing that one right, Carbohydrate Antibody. So that’s under the ASCA, not the pANCA, but the ALCA, ACCA and the AMCA are under these similar panels as they’re going after these glycans and these carbohydrates specifically. And so the AMCA is targeting what’s called Mannobioside. It’s just a carbohydrate structure. You find them in yeast and fungus and other things, and that’s where you’re getting these other again, the ASCA is anti-Saccharomyces cerevisiae antibody. So it’s under that same umbrella of attacking yeast. Now that one’s more common in Crohn’s, less common in ulcerative colitis, but again, I would argue, if it’s attacking a yeast, what’s wrong with the yeast is it has been mutated. Is there something in your body that’s causing your body to maybe confuse it? We call this molecular mimicry where picture . . . I’m just going to back it up, because it’s getting a little scientific.

I’ve got this big window right next to me. Picture. I look outside that window, and every time, every day, I see a man in a purple jacket and his dog poops on my lawn. Like, damn you, man in a purple jacket, I’m going to get you. Next time I see him come by, every time in the purple jacket and his dog poops on my lawn. I’m like, I’m going to get him. One day a storm comes through, and it’s raining and it’s muddy, and I can’t see out my window, but I see what looks like a guy in a purple jacket. I know that dude. He’s going to let his dog poop on my lawn. He might poop on my lawn, I don’t know anyway, so I look out the window, I throw a rock at him. Well, that time, it just so happened to be a different man in a purple jacket. It wasn’t the same one. So because my window was muddy, I couldn’t see clearly, I mistook an innocent bystander for the guy who always lets his dog poop on my lawn.

And in the same way, your body can do the similar thing called molecular mimicry, it’s got this looking glass as it’s trying to send these signals to and from to perceive what’s happening inside my body right now. Oh, there’s that bad guy. Well, that yeast might be looking like the actual bad guy, that Saccharomyces, or that fungus, or whatever it is, and now your body is attacking it, thinking it’s something else. We call this molecular mimicry. It’s just a similarity, oops, I’m attacking it. But in your case, what we’re seeing now are these AMCA antibodies, so your white blood cells are trying to clear up something, but then you’ve got these yeast antibodies. So why is it attacking yeast? Now we have to dive a little bit deeper and figure out what’s causing it.

It’s typically barrier activation, your Th1 and 17 immune pathways. Again, we’re getting very technical, so stop me where you want to, these are going to be innate pathways. So Th1, this is like, if you get the flu, your body is going to fight off that. Flu, viruses, intracellular pathogens, parasites, your body uses that pathway to get rid of them. Well, Th17 is a very . . . call it a hyperactive, extreme immune response where you end up seeing too much neutrophil, you end up seeing these skews of architectural changes, ulcers, strictures, fistula. So your immune system has just gone off the deep end. And what we have to look at here that’s progressing, what’s likely your situation, which is attacking yeast and different type of glycans, is there’s four stages of bowel disease. Now, if you guys are listening, it’s feeling a bit science. I’m going to try to dial it back for you here. Think about four stages of bowel disease. The first is acute. This is where picture you having one stressful day. You can deal with it. You shake it off. You get the flu, you get food poisoning, boom, it’s gone. You’re good. The second stage is chronic, after enough stressors, after a certain amount of time, medically speaking, it’s defined as a year or more with minimal changes, even in spite of medical intervention, it’s this ongoing inflammatory thing you can’t get rid of. So your body had a stressful day, it’s fine, but it can’t get rid of it goes on and on and on and on. Now you’re stage two. You’re chronic stage three.

You’re stressed out for so long, one day you snap and like, punch the mailman in the mouth. Your immune system overreacted. This is where we’re seeing a lot of the skewing of that Th17, your body was trying so hard to work to help you. Your immune system actually became toxic where it begins to degrade and erode your own tissues. And this is where we’re getting these ulcers, strictures, fistulas, bleeding, excess of neutrophils – that’s Th17 has overreacted.

Okay, well, the fourth stage now is where things tip off the deep end, and it’s actually pretty rare. What I see in Crohn’s Colitis or any bowel disease, really, that fourth stage we’re going to call immune dysfunction, from acute, one off, second or chronic, third now we’re dealing with this over reactive response. The stressful day you’re freaking out, your immune system can’t calm down. The fourth stage is this dysfunction. We’ll see a collapse where your immune system longer has the ability to respond.

We’ll see CIRS, that’s chronic inflammatory response syndrome, or MCAS, which is mast cell activation syndrome. So you have these chronic histamine based responses, your body can’t calm down. Or even true autoimmunity can happen in this whole stage. The vast majority of bowel disease are in the 123, it’s either acute and it just hit you really hard and fast, or it’s been around long enough it’s defined as chronic, or your immune system is progressively getting more and more and more and more and more reactive. Now it’s this hyperreactive. We’re calling it immune mediated.

If we look at the literature, Crohn’s Colitis Foundation, the CDC, the Mayo Clinic, they’ve downgraded Crohn’s Colitis from autoimmune to immune mediated. So they’re now recognizing there’s not auto antibodies. It’s just a hyperactive immune system. They suppress it without addressing the reason why it’s hyperactive.

Lindsey:

Okay, so when we were talking on the on the pre-interview call, you mentioned that one of these antibodies had something to do with E. coli, which is that?

Josh Dech:

That would be your OmpC, another antibody, relatively common, but OmpC stands for Outer Membrane Protein C, and this is what’s attacking a protein on the outside of an E. coli bacterium. And E. coli is wonderful. There are bad E. coli and really good E. coli. In fact, there was a probiotic, you read studies, it’s E. coli nissle 1917, and it’s been used to fight back all kinds of nasty infections, chronic E. coli, heavy duty benefits for the immune system. There’s even biologic drugs utilizing E. coli to help train your immune system. So it’s not a bad guy, but that OmpC antibody will attack these proteins on the outside of E. coli, disrupting some of that signaling or the benefits from the good and/or the bad guys, which can cause some issues in itself,

Lindsey:

Okay, but that’s not part of that IBD panel that I could see.

Josh Dech:

If you don’t have it on your IBD panel. I wouldn’t fuss about it.

Lindsey:

Yeah, I was just wondering, because I know E. coli has been my bacteria. Like, when I get SIBO it’s E. coli, not klebsiella. You know it’s not the methanogens so . . .

Josh Dech:

Right, well, consider that if you’re prone to SIBO and you’re prone to E. coli, E. coli is a fecal microbe, typically residing in the large intestine. But if you’re getting SIBO, so small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, that means there is typically what SIBO is. It’s fecal microbes flowing from the large into the small intestine. Well, if that’s happening, it’s not just overgrowing on its own. Something must be disrupting that ileocecal valve. So the valve that opens and closes between the small and large intestine, if it’s disrupted, now you get back flow, which leads us to the next clue.

What’s disrupting that valve? Well, there’s signals, there’s all kinds of stuff we can get from inflammation. You can get strictures. You can get parasitic infections. Those will actively disrupt that valve. If you have toxic bile, your liver is congested, your bile, because right at the end of the small intestine is called the terminal ileum, 95% of your bile gets reabsorbed. Well, if it’s toxic bile, it’s sludgy, it’s dirty bile, then it’s not going to be cleaning properly. It can lead to inflammation. We call this now ileitis. Your doctor is, oh, yeah, it’s Crohn’s. Yeah, okay. It’s just an inflamed bowel. Any diagnoses Crohn’s, colitis, diverticulitis, colonoscopies, endoscopies, all these things are telling you where you’re inflamed, how severely you’re flamed, and what is inflamed. It’s not telling me why, but the clues we can start to follow that if there’s an ileocecal issue, let’s start with the things that disrupt that.

Lindsey:

Interesting. I had not heard about that other than ileal breaking, which another guest talked about. I had not heard much about that in particular, so relating to the antibodies for E. coli, I was curious, because I know there are bacteriophages that reduce certain strains of pathogenic E. coli, and I’m wondering if that’s something that you use, or that’s useful? I’m thinking of the trademark PreforPro bacteriophages*.

Josh Dech:

Yeah, PreforPro is cool. Yeah. I mean, there are phages which will go and gobble up and eat some of these things. And a lot of them are considered prebiotics, but in the same sense, if I’ve got an E. coli overgrowth, my first instinct isn’t to go in and try to kill it off with an antimicrobial or antibiotics. My first instinct is to go through with probiotics to try to balance out the ecosystem. So if I can get – I mean, you have to think about your microbiome this way. It is a self-regulating ecosystem, which means it’s going to self soothe, self-balance. You get an infection, it contradicts it, or it kicks it out through exclusion. We say there’s too much room, no vacancy. Get out of here, and it pushes them out of the bowel. That’s all helpful stuff.

But the question we have to ask now is, if your body’s not self-regulating, what is lacking in that ecosystem in order to make that lack of self-regulation? Well, if that ecosystem is self-regulating, something might be lacking, but a lack is again, a dysregulation. So what caused this self-regulating system to dysregulate? If I have this overgrowth, this dysbiosis doesn’t happen on its own. If you’re already dealing with diet and lifestyle and all these basics, we have to look to the three things that make your body sick and can also disrupt your microbiome. That’s going to be toxins, microbes, deficiencies, nothing else. Getting hit by a bus doesn’t count, less trauma.

So we’re talking about the things that make you sick, toxins, environmental pesticides, mold, chronically high stress or chronically high blood sugar, all these things can be toxic to your body. Then you have your deficiencies : sunlight, fresh air, good relationships, quality sleep and rest and downtime, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, anything that gives your body tools to recover and heal and build itself. Those, if you’re deficient, things become disrupted or dysfunctional. So you have your toxins, you have your deficiencies. Now you have your microbes. Well, microbes are going to be your viruses, parasites, bacteria and fungi. So we have to then establish what happened throughout your life or your lifetime, in what order to set the stage for some of these three things, in whatever combination of toxins and microbes, deficiencies to end up putting your body in a state where it is, in fact, inflamed, dysfunctional, unable to develop this equilibrium or this homeostasis it wants to keep coming back to. Understanding that dysfunction is what leads us to an actual solution.

Lindsey:

So what tools do you use to try and unwind what’s happened to somebody who’s got a diagnosis of Crohn’s or colitis?

Josh Dech:

We have to start with a history. So you talked about, say, going in and trying some of these things to manage E. coli. That’s a downstream issue. Again, all these things are plant based medication, where we have herbs, we have supplements, even pharmaceuticals, and we apply them to this chronic inflammatory response. It’s this ongoing, chronic thing, but we take acute treatments and then apply them chronically. This is why I don’t intervene with all these things right away. We get to the sources.

So when I’m going to find somebody’s original root cause, because that’s the footing for the story. Once we have the story like Hansen and Gretel, we can follow these breadcrumbs on the way back, when was the first instance you were sick? I had a great conversation with a woman just a few months ago. She’s actually just finishing up our program, night and day difference, symptoms are almost gone entirely. And I said, how did you get colitis? She said, I got Covid. I was like, nah, billions of people got Covid and did not get colitis. So why did you get colitis? Long and short, took us about 15-18, minutes, and we wound back her story.

Turns out she was born and raised in Colombia, 1984, a very poor family, and she remembers she lived in in a big, long home that they all just kind of lived together in. And it was at her grandparents’ house, her room was at the back, and at the back of this house there was mold up and down the walls. She remembers it on her bed and her bed sheet, chronic tonsil infections, chronic sinus infections, ear infections, boils on her skin. By the time she was 20 years old, she had been on nearly 40 doses of antibiotics, which is massive for anybody. She was bottle fed strictly. So she never got that proper inoculation. On top of that, she was born in Colombia in 1984. If you know much about Pablo Escobar and the rise of the world’s biggest cocaine empire. Her words: if mom didn’t come home by 6 p.m. we’d assume she just she died in a bombing somewhere, because there were bombs going off and guns in the streets.

So this poor girl, it wasn’t Covid. It was bottle-feeding, mold, dozens of doses of antibiotics, chronic stress, trauma, all these things piled up when she hit her 30 she finally got Covid. That was a straw that broke the camel’s back. So when I’m looking for somebody’s root cause, we have to see what was the first layer of weakness, and how do we stack the story up to get you to where you are. Once we can do that now, we follow the breadcrumbs backward, and we’re able to start with what’s damaged right now and needs to move first, and we can create an outline and a protocol from there.

Lindsey:

And are you using stool testing?

Josh Dech:

Sometimes. So all about stool testing, in her instance, it may be worth looking at stool testing early, because she has so much known dysbiosis, and that disruption to her microbiome likely led to where she’s at now. But for most people coming in, they don’t have 40 doses of antibiotics. So the question isn’t, how bad is your microbiome now? It’s what caused your microbiome to disrupt. If I test it right now and take all the interventions, the reason why. Because it’d be upstream. Your microbiome is a downstream symptom effectively. So if I measure it now and then get rid of all the whys, the root causes, and address those over the next 2,3,4,5 months, and measure your gut microbiome again, it’s going to be completely different. So I’ve wasted $400-$500 for a test up front knowing I was going to take interventions that would change that microbiome anyway in a few months’ time. So I rarely do them up front unless there’s a known need or a cause, or it’s an antibiotic issue or a breastfeeding issue or something like that, because there’s other fish to fry in order of priority. Anytime you tell a story, there’s always a structure to it, and if we start jumping ahead, nothing makes sense, and you spend a lot of money on nothing.

Lindsey:

So what percentage of the time, just roughly, do you feel like mycotoxins are at the root of these conditions?

Josh Dech:

80%

Lindsey:

Really?

Josh Dech:

It’s shocking,

Lindsey:

Okay.

Josh Dech:

Oh yeah. 80% plus.

Lindsey:

I literally just wrote a blog post and I said I didn’t used to test mycotoxins, but then Vibrant started offering this great three for $700 and it’s now three for $800 deal. And I was like, well, let’s just throw in a third test. Let’s do the mycotoxins, because you maybe had a moldy house once and 80% of the people had mycotoxins.

Josh Dech:

I could see that it adds up. I mean, mold is present in 70 plus percent of US homes, and we know that the CDC even attributes 40%, depends on the stats, 20 to 40% of asthma cases to mold. But we haven’t looked at bowel diseases. But let’s go back to what you’re showing with the different antibodies. You may have a skew.

We talked about Th1, that’s viruses, innate pathogens, things like that. And then Th17, that’s that neutrophils, hyperreactivity, excessive mucosal inflammation. Th17 deals with mucus layers, so sinuses, oral, vaginal, rectal, like all those squishy surfaces. So if we have mold, we know mold can push that Th17 in the wrong direction, making it overreactive. If we look at the data, we can see mold elevates Th17. We can look at the data saying, Crohn’s Colitis largely have a skew of too much Th17 immune pathway.

But there’s no studies or very minimal saying, oh, mold causes colitis. We have to make the jump and say, well, this creates that immune pathway. Bowel disease is a result of that immune pathway. One plus one must equal two. We start testing, it’s 80% but then we have to consider two streams of mold. Since we’re down this rabbit hole, the first column A is inoculation. Column B is going to be residual damage.

So if I look at somebody in column A they’re actively being inoculated by mold in their home, their work environment, something they’re auto inoculating, which isn’t, I would say it’s relatively rare, but mold will grow and colonize in your sinuses, your lungs, your gut. So you’re actually growing mold inside of your own system, or they’ve now left that exposure. But toxins are still circulating, and most will degrade in about six months’ time. So the inoculation means circulating toxins, self-inoculation, or an active environmental exposure. That’s column A, or inoculating mold from somewhere.

Column B is residual damage. The bombs gone off, the fire’s out now it’s just what’s damaged your immune system, damage to your gut microbiome, damage to your gut lining, all these different things, cellular, mitochondrial health, bile congestion. Bile becomes very thick under mold, which toxifies your liver. This is all the residual damage mold has done.

So we look at column A, we can rule out there’s no more mold in your active environments. There’s no known issues column B. Let’s go after the residual damage. Now, your bile, your lymphs, liver toxicity, cellular mitochondrial health, all the things your body needs is a foundation to move anything. That’s where we get to start instead. So that’s why testing can be very, very helpful, for sure. But a lot of clinicians will go through and they’ll look at all these mycotoxins. Let’s go bind them. Can be dangerous, but jump into it, sure if you feel they’re ready for it, but they’ll go and bind and clean the toxins without assessing where they came from. That’s one of the biggest mistakes people are making.

Lindsey:

Oh, yeah, yeah. Obviously, stop them coming in before you start trying to kill them off.

Josh Dech:

Yeah. It shouldn’t have to be said, Lindsey, but it does, unfortunately.

Lindsey:

So you’ve mentioned some bile-related things a couple times, and bile for me, just remains this. I mean, I see markers about bile on the tests that I do, and I see markers of fat digestion, but at the end of the day, how do you distinguish between congested, sticky bile versus not enough bile or is it the same thing, essentially, because if it’s congested, you’re not getting enough of it?

Josh Dech:

That’s a great question. I would argue it’s similar. It’s not, again, uncommon. But if we look at stool, if someone is dealing with yellow, oily, greasy, really foul-smelling stool, any of those things in a checkbox, that’s malabsorbed fat, so you’re clearly not producing or getting enough bile where it needs to be. On the other hand, if you have gray stools, pale and gray or clay color, bile is like a green color that gets your stool and makes it more brown. So if it’s gray or pale in color, then we likely don’t have enough bile flow where it’s congested somewhere. So based on whether or not you’re absorbing fats, the color of the stool, that’s really helpful.

But I would say again, 80 to 90% of those with bowel disease need to support bile, because bile, we look at it and go, well, it’s a it’s a green, slippery, thickish substance that will emulsify fats. I need to break down fat, kind of like turning oil to water so I can absorb it. That is the case. But bile is not just fat digestion. It’s also an immune signaling molecule, and it’s a huge part of we’ll call regulating your microbial ecology, so it keeps that ecosystem balanced.

So bile helps your immune system in a few ways. So number one, yes, we know it emulsifies fats. It regulates your microbiome and helps keep that composition. It’s part of intestinal permeability, we actually reabsorb 95% or so of it at the end of your small intestine. We recycle and detox hormones. All kinds of things go through bile. They suppress inflammatory cytokines. They signal through immune receptors. There’s all kinds of things that get involved when we’re having bile flow, or adequate bile flow. The problem is, when your bile is not there, we have decreased immune regulation. Common things we see elevated in bowel disease, interleukin 6, interleukin 1 beta, MF kappa B, TNF alpha. These are different signaling pathways that trigger inflammation. And when Bile is disrupted, it disrupts these things, and can increase or decrease these immune pathways, leading someone to having a hyperreactive response.

So bile does so much more than just break down fats. It regulates T cells, or what we call T reg. You have different types of T cells and immune cells and B cells and all kinds of stuff in your body. T reg cells are your managers, so they will go in and say, oh, you’re over reactive. Let’s calm you down, or let’s get you balanced out. But without proper bile, you don’t even have regulation of your immune system. Loss of proper bile, you end up with Th17 dominance. And we talked about that neutrophil activity is excessive, so there’s too much neutrophil activation which leads to high levels of calprotectin, which ends up also leading to your gut barrier being broken down.

When your gut barrier is broken down, you have more immune dysregulation, and again, dysbiosis, because bile is not there. So there’s a lot of issues where, if your bile is not properly regulated, filtered, flowing, if it’s not supported, your immune system goes off the deep end. It leads to dysbiosis. Leaky gut gets worse. All these different things compound because of one little thing that’s meant to digest fats. It’s a crazy process, and I would say bile is needed, again 80, 90% of those with bowel disease need to promote healthier bile flow and support what we call drainage.

Lindsey:

And what do you do to support healthier bile flow?

Josh Dech:

A couple of things. So you want to make sure your liver is taken care of. If you don’t have any grass allergies or ragweed allergies, milk thistle* is a very standard herb used for the liver. NAC*, glycine*, you can use glutathione*, some go right to glutathione, it’s fine. I’m a big fan of things like taurine*, herbs, bitters*, gentian, dandelion, things like that. TUDCA* is really, really beneficial as well. TUDCA is a hugely important supplement for moving bile and even phosphatidylcholine. BodyBio makes their BodyBio PC*. It’s this really thick, almost molasses-like syrup, which, again, is really beneficial in moving liver, emulsifying and moving bile.

But on top of that, if we’re going to move bile, we often want to pair it with some kind of binder, and again, moving slowly, because some people will hear this. If I’m going to move bile, I’m going to get healthy. You can throw yourself into a flare and go off the deep end. You have to be very careful. So regulating bile, yes, but if you are going to mobilize toxins, it’s also important to bind them. This is where gentler binders, like humic and fulvic acid* (use code PERFECTSTOOL for 20% off), chlorella, these things come into play, particularly like a broken cell wall chlorella*, you can look at Sonne’s Detoxicant #7 is a bentonite clay liquid, you can utilize it. There’s lots of things to utilize, but we have to be very careful in moving bile. But those are some of my key things that I’ll utilize to do so.

Lindsey:

How do you distinguish between somebody who say needs taurine versus someone who needs phosphatidylcholine versus bitters versus . . . there’s so many different ways to promote bile flow. How do you pick which one is good for a given person?

Josh Dech:

I’d love to say that there is a checklist you can go through but there’s not always. So I find PC for some people can be a lot gentler for moving bile, but it can also aid in cellular detoxing. So if you’re a heavy mold case and you’re highly stressed, it might be in a cell danger response. Cell danger is kind of like your body panics. It locks all the doors. Each cell will hold onto things. If you force those doors open, you can flare.

So for some people, PC or phosphatidylcholine might be bad if they’re in that cell danger response, or they’re highly toxic, whereas TUDCA might be better. TUDCA in mouse models has shown to put some colitis in complete remission. So lots of benefits to that as well. If I’m going to go through glycine, it’s typically more of a bonus. But if I find somebody’s glutathione depleted, either through lab testing, I can find that through an organic acid test, we can get an idea if they may be depleted. Or simple one, if you lift up your tongue, the veins on the bottom of your tongue and a deep, deep purple blue and yours look really quite pale. So a deep, deep purple, blue vein might show glutathione deficiency. So that’s when I might go to NAC, glutathione or glycine.

But if somebody, I suspect, has really thick biofilms. It’s been around a while. It’s been 20 years of issues. I might not give them NAC because n-acetyl cysteine is a biofilm disruptor as well as a precursor to glutathione. So you have to look at all these different markers in somebody. And really, there’s no perfect system. It’s really a probability score or a risk ratio. Do I find that this is really risky to give everybody all the time, the combination, yes, but there’s little nuances to look at to reduce your risk profile.

Lindsey:

Interesting,

Josh Dech:

Yeah, so it’s a very nitty gritty process.

Lindsey:

Yeah. So I often see calprotectin, fecal lactoferrin or other inflammatory markers elevated on stool tests, but not necessarily all of them elevated together. So I’m just wondering, is there a definitive marker on a stool test that points to IBD, or are there always other possibilities of what that could be? Do you always need confirmation from a colonoscopy?

Josh Dech:

Well, I think I would actually posit a question to your question. Needing a diagnosis, in my mind, is bullshit. I don’t really care. I get people to come in like, oh, I think I have Crohn’s. I want to get help. I want to join a program, or whatever it is, but, I’ve got to find out first. I’m like, why? Well, I want to know if it’s Crohn’s or colitis. Like, who cares?

Here’s my argument, whether or not you’re trying to get the differential diagnosis you try, was it Crohn’s? Is it colitis? Is it lymphocytic colitis? Is it microscopic colitis? Is it pancolitis? Is it proctitis? Who cares? What we’re doing is we’re taking inflammation and we’re giving it a label. It’s all on a spectrum.

And this is where my argument for IBD and bowel issues came from, way back when I first started, was that IBS is the like early stage. We talked about four stages of immune response: acute, chronic, immune mediated, meaning hyperactive, and then immune dysfunction. Let’s look at the same levels, or same progressive chart for IBS to IBD.

Low grade is like food sensitivities, sensitive gut, etc. Number two is going to be your IBS type symptoms. So you’re more sensitive. Diarrhea, constipation, you get cramping pain, the typical stuff. As it progresses down the line, it gets worse and worse and worse. Now you’ve got colitis, actual inflammation, possible ulceration of the colon, the large bowel, which could progressively get worse. And now it’s Crohn’s, where it’s anywhere mouth to anus, including external perianal abscesses, fissures, etc. So we have a sliding scale of severity from a little delicate to a diagnosable condition like IBS, till we have known inflammation or severe immune activation.

When we can do this, we can look at diagnosis. Say, why does it matter? If you look at all my symptoms, and you check, check, check the boxes, you go to your doctor. They go, yeah, we get your colonoscopy. We did your calprotectin. We did the fecal lactoferrin. You got the symptoms. We did the antibodies. Yep, you check, check you have colitis. Well, now what they told you what’s happening, where it’s happening, and how severe. They checked enough boxes to give you a label so they can just give you the drug to manage those symptoms.

They told you what’s happening, where, and how bad, and how they’re going to control the symptoms. They’ve not told you why it’s happening, to be able to understand how we can reverse this process to stop the symptoms from having to be controlled ever at all. Anyways, so for me, when I’m looking at diagnostic criteria, it’s all crap because it means nothing. Unless you’re pursuing a medication, the root causes, no matter where you are on the sliding scale spectrum are going to be the same, and we’re going to find them the exact same way based on your history. How it got here, the development, was it rapid onset, slow onset. Where are your weak links? Were you bottle fed strictly? Were you exposed to mold? Did you have 20 doses of antibiotics? Did you grow up in a traumatic environment? What set the stage? Because no matter what label you’ve given, my way back is the exact same. And so diagnostic criteria, I don’t really care.

Lindsey:

That makes a lot of sense. The reason that I guess I care is because, number one, I want people to take stuff seriously. Like, sometimes they’re just, like, half committed to whatever it is. You’re telling them you have this serious condition, then they’re going to take it more seriously. But I guess the other piece too is that I’ve had clients who’ve had elevated inflammatory markers, and one client ended up having colon cancer, and thank goodness I encouraged her to do a colonoscopy, because she literally said I saved her life. And I mean, I don’t normally do that, but if I see the potential of IBD, I usually do say you should get a colonoscopy, because I want to make sure.

Josh Dech:

You know, I think that’s a very fair way to put it, and that’s one of the nuances. If you’re if you’re trying to clear cancers, yeah, go get it done. There are advanced blood markers you can do instead, so it’s less invasive, but a colonoscopy is still going to be the gold standard for identifying colon cancer. So if that is a risk and something you’re concerned about, I’m certainly not telling you not to get the test done. In fact, all my clients come in like, should I get a colonoscopy? Like, if your doctor’s telling you, then yes, I can never, and will never tell you anything about your medication, what to take, what not to take, whether or not to do your colonoscopies.

What I can say, I have no concerns for cancer. I’ve done my blood markers, I’ve done my other scans, I’ve done my advanced blood chemistry, I have no need to screen for cancer. I won’t bother, because it’s going to tell me what, where and how, but not why. And so in that instance, I agree. I’m so glad she got that colonoscopy, and that’s one of the few who I believe should get one, because now they know, they can take swift intervention.

Lindsey:

Yeah, so you were talking about neutrophils, and I’m curious what you can see on just a CBC that might tell you about what’s going on in the gut.

Josh Dech:

Yeah, so let’s look at monocytes. For example, if I, and again a CBC or complete blood count, it’s helpful, but it’s not everything. There are other panels we can get, but monocytes are one that we’ll see in biotoxins, or endotoxins. So like your bacteria, dysbiosis, they might be elevated trying to fight off some kind of chronic exposure. If I see elevated neutrophil activity, you can get more neutrophil activity in the bowel than you would in the blood. But again, it can indicate some ongoing infection. Eosinophils, you’ll see them elevated 25 to 30% of the time with those with parasitic infections, for example, that might be a leading indicator. So there’s different markers we can look at in blood to give us an indicator.

But what I’ve actually found really helpful, there’s a really cool panel from Cyrex labs, and it’s called the lymphocyte map. Now this one is extremely in depth, and it measures your NKT cells. You get CD 16 and CD 56 markers and all these different things, and they show you patterns. And it’s something I’m still learning on my own, but I got on the call with one of the doctors and one of my guys who have been working with him now for probably eight, nine months. It was severe, severe, huge histamine reactions and mold infections, and his bile was congested because the sphincter of oddi. The bile travels down this tube and injects into your small intestine. That was, that was spasming.

So we had a lot of stuff we had to get through, and he’s got this little bit of linger. I was like, why don’t we get this immune panel done see if your immune system is dysregulated? So he went in and measured all of his T cells and B cells and NKT cells, and got these CD again, 16 and 56, different markers. So it’s advanced. It’s really advanced immunology and I brought it to one of the doctors who did the consult at the lab.

I said, what am I missing here? And he says, well, did he have a mold infection? I said, he had mold. We got rid of it. He said, yeah, I could see that on the map. That’s good. Ask him about herpes. There’s no herpes viral check on this thing. It’s just an immune profile pattern. This doctor is an immunologist. So back to my guy said, did you ever get herpes? He goes, holy shit. He says, I forgot about that. Says I kissed the wrong girl. I got a cold sore within two weeks, was in my bowel. I got Crohn’s disease. He says, herpes. The herpes virus set off my Crohn’s I was like, ta, da. There it is. That was the thing we were missing, which we saw in this immune map based on the ratios of different cells presented in his body.

So there is some really cool stuff we can get beyond just a CBC. But again, it’s helpful, but I don’t rely on it. But if I see somebody, for example, with high ferritin. Ferritin’s like your storage, but I see them with low serum iron and high ferritin, or even a super high ferritin, your body might be hoarding iron because something might be eating that. Well, if I see that with typical symptoms and presentation on top of elevated eosinophils, might be parasites. Because parasites will eat the iron. So eosinophils elevated. Check probably parasites. Iron depleted. Check could be parasites. Other symptoms, eczema, psoriasis, early signs of hair loss, poor fat absorption, anxiety-based symptoms, grinding your teeth or drooling in your sleep. These are other symptoms you can look for and go that’s probably parasites. Let’s deal with that. So there’s layers that we can go through in this way.

Lindsey:

Do you have a number in your head about how high the eosinophils have to be to think parasites?

Josh Dech:

Off the top of my head, I have to go back to my conversions, because I’m in Canada, and our numbers are different, and so I’ve got two different sets of numbers, and I couldn’t even tell you, but if you’re curious, you as a clinician or anybody listening could go through there’s a system like, like Function Health. They’ll give you reference ranges and what’s optimal versus normal or optimal diagnostics, right?

Lindsey:

I’m curious, because a previous guest looked at my blood test and she said, she said, I think you have parasites. And I’ve done like five stool tests that show no parasites. So I’m like, is this realistically something I should be concerned about?

Josh Dech:

Well, I think that’s interesting because parasites don’t always show up in the bowel. They might be in a pancreas or the liver. They might be hiding in bile. They can burrow, if you got lower back pain that like chiropractor and physio never helps you get rid of. They can burrow and actually attack the muscles, leading to this chronic stiffness. Parasites don’t always come out in a stool, so, I mean, yes, if you have the pattern of them, they may still be worth going after, but then the question has to be asked, how do they get there? Because your body should be able to balance or keep them at bay. So what about your system inside allowed parasites to overgrow in the first place? Now we’re getting another why and another, why we get to go deeper and deeper.

Lindsey:

Are gut diseases more prevalent in North America than other places and if so why?

Josh Dech:

Oh boy, here’s a stat for you, Lindsey. So I’ll say North America, excluding Mexico, because those are my numbers. So Canada, US, we’re about 4.7% of the global population. Depending on the stats you look at, we have up to 50% of the global bowel disease cases. Those 8 million Crohn’s Colitis diagnoses worldwide could be many more non diagnosed, nearly 50% again, depends on the data. Thiry to fifty percent are just in Canada, USA, and we’re seeing it becoming more and more prevalent in industrialized countries. So those with more chemicals, manufacturing, machining, EMFs like just standard indoor modern living is leading to more and more bowel disease. So it’s absolutely an issue of modernity. The question we have to be asking is, how can we modify our environments in such a way, because our environments are no longer compatible with our human biology. So how can we modify our current modern environments to become compatible, once again, to give our bodies the best chance at healing. Because it is remarkable we’re not all dead, quite frankly.

Lindsey:

It is remarkable how resilient the human body is, yeah.

Josh Dech:

Yeah. We get diseases instead of collapsing, which is pretty cool.

Lindsey:

Yeah. I mean, it beats dying, I suppose. Yeah.

Josh Dech:

Depends on the disease, I guess. Yeah.

Lindsey:

Yeah. So, I mean, we’ve touched on this a little bit related to Western medicine, but in the context of working with somebody with IBD, do you bring in or encourage people to continue working with their western medicine providers around IBD, say if they come in already on a biologic or something else, or do you keep your hands clean of all that and just work on the root cause?

Josh Dech:

Yeah, it’s a really delicate legal dance, so I don’t intervene. I’ve actually encouraged people who came in, they’re so severe, like I want to go natural. I’m anti-drug. I said, look, I’m with you, to use these acute treatments chronically is the problem. But if you are so severe, you’re losing weight, you’re bleeding, you can’t get out of bed, like you just can’t do anything, get the drugs, do what you have to do. It’s the lesser of the evils to dying. Get yourself under control, and then it’ll make your intervention much less miserable.

And so I had a little boy who came in. He’s four and a half years old, and we started together. Was mold. Our family in Northern California, and it was a brand new build so if you’re listening to this and oh it can’t be mold, their home was built in 2021. By 2023 this boy was severely ill because the wood that was used to build the home was moldy, and those toxins push through the paint and the drywall. And there’s no mold on the walls, but it was behind it, the toxins came through. And he was severely, severely ill, 16/17 different strains of mold toxins. And so we went in and had to go deal with this.

And he was on, what was it? I think it was Entyvio, so another biologic, or immune suppressing drug. And his mom said, what do we do, leav him on Entyvio, I said, yes. One, I’m not going to touch that with a 30 foot pole. And then they ended up changing him over to Stelara injections every eight weeks or something. So long and short, they stayed on the drugs, but he was still really symptomatic, very severe, 10 plus bowel movements a day. And so as we were working together, after a year or two on these drugs, he finally started to get better.

The doctor went, oh, the drugs are starting to work. Duh, sure. Anyway. So we went through, we found the mold we remediated, got it out of his system. He started to get better. He’s on the drugs, and it got to a point where he was completely symptom free. So mom went, well, instead of giving these injections every six weeks, let’s go to eight. He did great. By week nine, he flared again. Okay, gave him the injection, no problem. It was Humira at that point. And so they went out little bit longer, little bit longer. By the time she was done, he was nine months like I haven’t given him a single Humira injection now, in how long. He was fine. So it wasn’t Skyrizi infusions, it was Humira injections. And so a lot of the time you can simply make your way through a protocol, particularly if you’re symptomatic, and then make the decision on your own or have the conversation with your doctor to lengthen the time between doses or decrease the amount of each dose to be able to decrease your serum levels in some way, to see if your body’s able to balance itself. That’s how I approach those conversations, not you should come off. It’s: “Do you feel ready to have the conversation without me?”

Lindsey:

So I didn’t get the specifics on the testing. If you do use stool testing, whose test do you like?

Josh Dech:

I’m big fan of Vibrant Wellness. Vibrant has, oh, they’re great. Their sample sizes, those yours? Yeah. Their sample sizes are really large, which means you get a better sample for accuracy. You get a better median. And so they’re very, I say, very high caliber test. In fact, Dr .Tom O’Brien’s a big fan of them as well. He told me they’re something like 92 or 98% accuracy. It’s really super high. And their Gut Zoomer report is almost 2000 pages long. It goes through all of your specific microbes. It goes through inflammatory pathways, antibodies. It’ll show you MMP9s and lactoferrins and different types of fecal fats and short chain fatty acids. It’ll measure 100+, 200 different microbes. It’ll screen through parasites and viruses, which, again, aren’t perfect. It’s an incredible test of all the lab tests out there. I’d say that Vibrant is one of my top. Second to that, I’ve really come to like Tiny Health*.

Lindsey:

Me too!

Josh Dech:

Same page twinsies! Because they use shotgun sequencing, so it’s a lot more accurate. And years back, I was on a podcast with Christine Hassler, and I was like, well, Tiny Health, I find it more qualitative, not quantitative. So it tells me what’s happening, but not how much. I didn’t really care for the test. Well, Cheryl Sue Hoy, who founded Tiny Health shows up on my podcast, she’s like, we should talk. My tests aren’t as bad as you think. And I was like, maybe I misunderstood. So I went back and I ran a few, and I quite like them, because again, shotgun sequencing, it’s the next evolution beyond PCR. The shotgun gives us a much more accurate profile. And they do babies as well. They do adults, and they even do vaginal so there’s a lot of different microbiomes they can then test to get a picture of your health, which is quite incredible.

Lindsey:

Yeah, yeah, no, those are the two pretty much that I’m using almost all the time now. The only thing that I object to on the Gut Zoomer is their reference ranges, like they’re all kind of zero to 10, 10 to 20, 20 or more. And I’m like, could I just find out what percentage of microbiome this composes? Because this may be over representative, but if it’s over representative at .01% of the microbiome, I’m not as concerned is if it’s 13% which is what the Tiny Health will tell you.

Josh Dech:

Sure.

about

Lindsey:

Yeah, I’ve talked to them about changing the reference ranges and just giving us absolute ranges based on percentage of microbiome.

Josh Dech:

And that’s the issue with any range. I mean, you and I, for example, we’ve never met before. The odds of us actually being related by blood are very, very, very, very small, but you and I will still share 99 plus percent of our DNA. But if we measure our microbiomes, it’s something like up to 30% of your microbiome is shared in the same way DNA would be. As far as your overlap and the way we are all the same. So there’s so much variance in a microbiome, and that is one of the fallibilities of these tests, is we’re using stats from 1000s of people who have next to no relation to each other, we find the mean averages and go, well, this is typically a little bit higher and is associated with these symptoms or better health or whatever. And then we try to put people into these boxes accordingly. So it isn’t perfect by any means, but again, it is a window, and that’s why I look at them as being useful in some regard.

Lindsey:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, you’re trying to figure out what is the signal here.

Josh Dech:

Exactly.

Lindsey:

And what’s the noise?

You kind of mentioned this about the model of IBS versus IBD and how they’re progressing. But I’ve had post infectious IBS/SIBO symptoms for like, 30 years now, and I actually managed to bring my Vinculin antibodies down to normal through a couple ProLon Fasting Mimicking Diet* rounds, but it doesn’t seem to have made a lick of difference in terms of, if I let up on my constant regime of prokinetics and I take MSM* as an anti-microbial, a maintenance one, you know, the bloating will begin to get out of control again. So anyway, my CdtB was elevated, though, so there was that too, so I’ve been dealing with that. So I’m just curious if you have any experience with that type of thing.

Josh Dech:

The post infectious IBS?

Lindsey:

Post infectious IBS, and how that might progress towards Crohn’s, if that’s what I indeed have. Who knows?

Josh Dech:

Yeah. I mean, it’s hard to say again, whether or not you have Crohn’s is really a matter of immune activity based on the symptoms given. But we look at post infectious IBS, that is one of the more common causes, and it’s nasty, which leads to autoimmune SIBO. Number one thing we’ll see in autoimmune SIBO, and this is key. Kieran Krishnan, Allison Siebecker, they talk about this quite a lot, where, if there’s food poisoning, then it’s back to that molecular mimicry. Say, that infection, that microbe, had a protein that looks like something your own intestines are producing. Then the thought is that you’ll forever be attacking your own intestines for producing what your body thinks is toxic. So that post infectious is a very different animal.

This is where I would a because I don’t have enough information on you to make a judgment at this stage. Just say here’s what I believe is probably driving it. But let’s say I had all the information in front of me, all the labs, all the tests, and I still went, something is missing. I look at an outside consult because I’ve had a number of dozens over the years, of 600 plus people we’ve seen now, I think we said on the intro it’s 500, I think we’re about 600 plus now, cases reversed. But even at that, I’d say probably up to three dozen, I’ve had to go through outside consults and bring other experts when my team and I are not sure what to do now.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. I actually, I started doing it because I admired so much, because clinicians came to me, doctors saying, hey, can you help me with this? I’m like, one, I’m not a doctor, but I’ll try. And that worked out great, because I just know things right, because I’ve been here. And so that was early in my career. I had to put my ego aside. I’m like, there are a lot of people out there who know a lot more things than I do, and I really learned to respect physicians for doing outside consults, and started doing them in my own practice. Once I basically graduated from being a boy to being a man, I’m able to say, there’s a lot more to this picture, and I don’t know.

Lindsey:

That’s interesting. And so how do you arrange that? Do you just say, can I do a little consult about this?

Josh Dech:

Yeah, I’ll shoot them an email or a text. Depends on the physician or the clinician.

Lindsey:

Will they charge you a fee for that, presumably?

Josh Dech:

Sometimes some of them, it’s just a trade. You know, we just work together and we have that relationship. Some will say, yep, it’s a couple 100 bucks or X amount. And here’s my fee for doing this, but it depends on the relationship I have with that clinician and how much work I do for them. But either way, we’re compensated, either financially, or they’re compensated with my time.

Lindsey:

Interesting. So do you believe in limiting fiber? When people with IBD are flaring,

Josh Dech:

That one is largely dependent on the individual. So I had a woman, you can find her on my website. Name is Karen, and she was having 50 bowel movements a day. Like absolutely, I’d say definitely that high. I’ve seen a couple of people with 50 plus, but she was, she described it like a faucet. It was just nonstop. And we put her on seeds and nuts and all kinds of stuff. Hers is largely stress, so we started to manage her stress and stress symptoms. Within three weeks, she went from 50 BMs a day down to about five and eight. But she was eating bags and bags of seeds and nuts when her doctors told her no fiber, so I don’t go low fiber necessarily, though there is great efficacy around the SCD, the AIP, Atkins, carnivore.

There’s different diets, but in the same sense, there are people who thrive on vegetarian or even vegan. There are some people who thrive on carnivore. The question we have to ask is, Is your body, your level of inflammation and or your gut microbiome able to handle a load of fiber? If I give it to you, if it is, have at it. I’m not picky. My rules are three things when it comes down to diet, and everything else is just per individual. Number one tolerable foods, so it can’t bother you when you eat it obviously. Number two is whole foods, so it came out of the ground, a bush, a tree, it flies, walks, swims, God forbid, it crawls. But those are like foods that have been around since the beginning of time. You can eat that. So it’s whole foods, tolerable foods. Third rule is low histamine because, again, mold, parasites, chronic stress, these are major drivers of IBD, but also major drivers of histamine issues. And so if you’re consuming high histamine foods, you’re aggravating an aggravated immune system, and you’re going to get these types of reactions, bloating, etc. Outside of that, how much fiber you consume, you tell me, and then we go from there.

Lindsey:

That’s interesting, because I don’t think most of the IBD related diets have any histamine component to them. Do they?

Josh Dech:

Some might. That’s a really great question. I’d have to go back to my charts again. I deal with diet so little in my practice, like, unless you’re eating, you know, Chick fil A and McDonald’s and drinking and all kinds of junk. I rarely make meal plans. They’re a helpful part, but I’m not going to change your food if I don’t know what foods do and don’t work for you. While I’m doing all these other things, it’s unnecessary complicating factors. So food I don’t touch much, so I couldn’t answer that question specifically, but maybe they don’t address histamines.

Lindsey:

So you were talking about whole foods only. Does that mean you’re not using any added prebiotic fibers or just that you’re saying when you’re eating, don’t eat processed food?

Josh Dech:

Well, yeah, don’t eat processed food, just whole foods, so your fruits and vegetables and meats, and that’s about it. Try to keep it as clean as you can. Spices, herbs. I’m fine with most of those, unless, again, you know they aggravate you. I’m not going to fuss about it when it comes down to specifics. Most people who come in to see me, it’s kind of a last straw. Like I’ve tried every diet. I’ve I tried every pill. I’ve seen this specialist, that specialist, I can’t get it fixed. What do I do? You know what you can and can’t eat. I’m not going to tell you. You tell me, and I work within those guidelines.

Lindsey:

Okay, is there anything I haven’t asked about that you wanted to talk about or like to talk about?

Josh Dech:

You know, normally towards the end of a podcast, it’s a pretty common question, like did we miss anything. I will circle back because you actually had the foresight to bring this conversation up. We talked about the diagnoses. What I always end the podcast with is, never accept a diagnosis. They’re stupid. They make no sense. A diagnosis is given under the pretext or under the understanding that your body is just fallible by design, and your diseases are what they are because of your bad luck, or God plays favorites, or whatever it is, you’re inflamed. Let’s just manage it. That doesn’t make any sense. It flies in the face of everything we know to be science. We know inflammation is simply a response from your immune system trying to protect you or trying to heal you. The question is, what from? And in medicine, we don’t ask what from. We just give you drugs to mask it, like if you got a hostage in your living room, Lindsey, and they’re screaming for help. They say help me, help me, rescue me, and you put tape over their mouth. Is the hostage happy to be there? No, you can’t hear them, but they still want to leave. The same thing. With your immune system, you can suppress it and you can silence it, but it doesn’t mean it’s okay. So by accepting a diagnosis, you’re accepting this idea that your body is just fallible and that flies in the face of everything we know to be science. Inflammation is there for a reason. Don’t accept it. Dig in. Ask why. If you ask why, enough times you’ll get to the deepest layer to understand your true root cause.

Lindsey:

I completely agree. In fact, on my Facebook page, it says, “Defy your diagnosis.”

Josh Dech:

I love that.

Lindsey:

Yeah.

Josh Dech:

I respect that.

Lindsey:

So tell people where they can find you.

Josh Dech:

Oh, boy, head over to gutsolution.ca. You can find my Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, whatever, Joshdech.health, you can get my podcasts. And for Crohn’s Colitis, specifically, I do have a podcast called Reversing Crohn’s and Colitis Naturally. It’s strictly about bowel disease, and it’s from these lectures I do every week in my Facebook group. And I take those lectures I do live and I put them on the podcast. They’re on my YouTube channel. You can find all that information out there, as well as the ReversABLE Podcast, where we’ll be seeing you, I believe, later this year, but all that can be found in one simple place, just gutsolution.ca.

Lindsey:

Okay, awesome. We’ll have those links in the show notes, and people can follow up with that.

Josh Dech:

Looking forward to it.

Lindsey:

Thank you so much for being there.

Josh Dech:

Thanks, Lindsey.

May 5, 2026May 5, 2026

Human Milk Oligosaccharides and the Future of Gut-Brain-Immune Therapies with Alex Martinez

Adapted from episode 167 of The Perfect Stool podcast and edited for readability with Alex Martinez, CEO and Co-founder of Intrinsic Medicine and Lindsey Parsons, EdD.

Lindsey Parsons:

So do you want to share with us what took you from working in law and pharmaceuticals to co-founding intrinsic medicine?

Alex Martinez:

Yeah, absolutely. As with everything, it’s usually when you realize the position you’re in is not the position where you can make the impact that you desire. And I probably started my journey into this even before I began my formal education and professional career.

The first job I had, I grew up on a farm in central Maryland, and after about 10 years of farm labor, my first position outside of that was working as an instructional assistant for children with special needs, specifically severe autism, nonverbal children. And so that was an extremely special experience I had, and it was something where, firsthand, I was able to immerse myself in the needs of children as well as families, and see how they were trying to orient themselves, and realizing that there’s just many different ways to create a difference around the different angles that are needed for cases like autism, where there’s a social component, there’s a very profound communication component. I think also that really laid the seed for where I am today, because I also saw the GI issues that these children often had, and firsthand, got to participate in some of the early dietary interventions, of course they are constipated, if this is all they eat, but also recognizing the challenges associated with that.

So that was really the fundamental inspiration that transcended when I went to UPenn for school, and that’s really where I wanted to understand the overarching ecosystem that I felt was not serving these children. And so that’s where I focus on public health.

So of course, I went to law school two weeks after I graduated from college, and then from there, I worked in the healthcare system. I was originally going to be a healthcare attorney, realized that in some ways I was perpetuating the dysfunction in the system through that practice. And then led me to Silicon Valley, practiced at one of the top law firms for a year or so, and that was boring and terrible.

So from my early entrepreneurial experience, I actually started a digital health company. Before that was an industry class, it was like 2008, it was an MIT spin out. So that was an important part of my Genesis story, because one anecdote I’ll share from that is we were helping patients take care of themselves in the community setting after being discharged from hospitals, and we used Teach Back to ensure that they could comprehend why they were hospitalized and what their treatment and follow up needs were.

One of the things we found out was there were patients being readmitted with glycemic issues, and we realized that the nurses were showing them how to inject insulin in an orange. Some of them were actually injecting their insulin in an orange in the community setting.

Lindsey Parsons:

Oh my gosh!

Alex Martinez:

Right, and so that’s a gap. It’s not something we think about, and we can’t fault these people. We have to think about the education mismatch to the literacy and comprehension of those patients. Figure out what their comprehension is, and so that’s using teach back, and we actually use virtual avatars. And people are actually exposing where they had comprehension gaps.

So I’ve always thought about how we empower patients with education so they can go through a patient journey and make truly informed consent. Because as I got into the pharmaceutical industry and focused on genetic diseases, I was always concerned about our patients comprehending what they’re doing, joining clinical studies and eventually making pretty major decisions about these treatments.

And just to kind of wrap up, the final thing that got me here is, while I worked on a bunch of transformative drugs for genetic disorders, I realized that all of these chronic conditions, the ones driven by the common causes of dysbiosis and immune dysregulation, the pharma industry really kind of turned its back on.

And so my premise was no one’s developing new therapies for the things that me and my loved ones are going to suffer from. I’m going to do it. And I’m going to take a different approach versus the approach, which I think has a certain amount of hubris in it, we know better than nature, I’m going to lean into the other side and say there is an intelligence in nature that we can’t comprehend.

And I’ll use evolutionary biology to look for molecules that appear at the most vulnerable junctions in human life and then assess those therapeutic properties in a therapeutic context. And that’s what led me to these special oligosaccharides that are found in human milk.

Lindsey Parsons:

Okay, interesting and winding story. Can you tell me about the research around gut bacteria, and gut-brain-immune access disorders? And you can take them one by one or lump them all together, however you want to do it?

Alex Martinez:

Yeah, absolutely. So I think the first thing is, let’s define gut-brain-immune access disorders probably because you, and I’m sure, as your listeners would say, okay, so these guys added another letter, we know about the gut-brain axis. Why did you add immune there?

And this is an evolving space, and what we realize is the cross talk between the immune system, both the innate and the adaptive immune system, that really needs to be called out as its own aspect to modulate this system, because they’re all participants in the system.

And this is where, for a lot of these gut-mediated disorders, we’re seeing that at least subsets, there seems to be a primary immune driver. So for example, major depressive disorder, about a third of patients will have a very clear cytokine profile and associated dysbiosis. Same thing with autism spectrum disorder and even disorders like Parkinson’s, which, based on Brock’s hypothesis, starts with a disturbed microbiome, both in the oral, nasal pharyngeal, but also the gut.

And that’s typically been approached in pharmaceuticals as a neurodegenerative disease, brain first, when there’s been clear evidence for a long time that the prodromal symptom in many Parkinson’s patients is constipation. And it’s constipation and actually a REM sleep disorder, that are some of the earliest symptoms before the motor manifestations of Parkinson’s.

And so then we’re thinking about these protein aggregates, and say, what are they doing? There must be an adaptive context for them occurring that then becomes maladaptive and pathogenic in a chronic context, and that’s where we see a local immune activation, which drives production. There’s a clear dysbiosis, but it’s also one where the metabolites change how the gut’s functioning, what’s crossing over.

And as many people know, like 70% of our immune system is from the gut, and then that immune system is sending out signals that’s changing protein synthesis. And there’s some speculation that alpha synuclein may actually be part of an acute immunological response, that when chronically activated, we have all these excess proteins.

And what are proteins? They’re unstable molecules, especially in a context of oxidative stress, and then they are able to travel directly from the gut up the vagus nerve, central nervous system, where they essentially activate microglia, the local immune system. And eventually they’re overwhelming it as it tries to clear it out, and that creates a lot of collateral damage, namely on neuron function.

So that’s just one example.

So that’s why we thought it was so important to add that immune component, because we think that we have to essentially look at the gut as an ecosystem, but we actually have to look at the entire human biological system, including the somatic cells, as part of that ecosystem. I think they’re all connected.

Lindsey Parsons:

What are the somatic cells?

Alex Martinez:

The immune cells, but even the colonocytes as well. They’re all talking. And I think this is one of the other interesting things about the human milk oligosaccharides.

What’s fun about these is that they’re not ours, they’re not intrinsic medicines. They belong to everyone, and I think of us like Sherpas. We’re carrying them up this mountain of the burden of scientific evidence to elucidate their properties. They’ve been known for a long time, but it’s like we need to rigorously elucidate their properties so that then they can be applied in the right context.

And I think one of the things that is important, and this is why I think the time is only right now, it’s through the work of people like you and your listeners, the practitioners, for helping diffuse our understanding of the microbiome. But oligosaccharides are called by different names. They’re called glycans. Some of them are also called siglecs. So all this science has been siloed based on semantics.

What are glycans? They are an interspecies language. It’s how organisms communicate, especially microorganisms. So what we’re looking at is a language from mothers to be able to directly communicate to the microbiome, but also to the developing cells in her baby’s body, and saying everything is okay, and essentially providing bumper rails for the appropriate development of this union, this symbiotic ecosystem.

Lindsey Parsons:

You mentioned alpha synuclein. Can you explain exactly what that is?

Alex Martinez:

Yeah, that is the protein that is found in people who pass away from Parkinson’s. So they find aggregates of it, like clumps of that in the brain, and they say this is what causes Parkinson’s. They also found clumps of that in the enteric nervous system, the gut nervous system. And so the mechanistic, or the pharmaceutical approaches, are: okay, let’s take out that protein.

Lindsey Parsons:

Sort of like the amyloid plaques with Alzheimer’s, right?

Alex Martinez:

Bingo. And what these may be is just a marker of a perturbation of a system. And these actually may have been band-aids, right?

Lindsey Parsons:

Like plaques, right?

Alex Martinez:

Yep, yep. They may have been band-aids for what was actually going on, which is you have activated immune cells causing collateral damage and creating oxidative stress that then damages the cells in the body. And then there it’s basically a sterile inflammatory response that’s occurring, right?

So these protein aggregates, we’re thinking about them a little bit differently, because we’re like, the body produces these for a reason, and also has its own clearance mechanism for it. So what we’re seeing is an overwhelm of that mechanism. And so we say, how do we go upstream of this where we can stop whatever’s causing this cascade, and then we can send signals to those immune cells, where they’re able to say, actually, we’ve been overexcited here, right?

Because you think that immune cells are either kind of in soldier mode or in construction mode, and that’s where we want to change them. And that’s one of the fascinating things that I’d want to remark on here, Lindsey, is these molecules don’t just act in the microbiome, so independent of that.

We know some of them enter the bloodstream, and we’ve done our own studies, and we’ve looked at, for example, macrophages, which are the first responders, the innate immune cells. And the phenotype of a macrophage when it’s super active and ready to attack something is called the M1, so that’s the pro-inflammatory phenotype. And then M2 is a regenerative phenotype, where it’s just clearing debris, kind of rebuilding tissues.

These compounds can actually shift an activated macrophage back to a regenerative phenotype, and this is independent of metabolites or anything from the gut microbiome or any signals from the gut microbiome. So that’s really the premise here. We’re looking for a return to homeostasis.

And ultimately, that’s why these compounds exist in early life, because a baby, if you look at their immune system, is totally imbalanced, right? It’s totally hyperactive. That’s why they get rashes. It’s why a food allergen can lead to massive atopic dermatitis and colic and all these other issues.

And it’s been known for a long time that these compounds can ameliorate all that and change their lifelong trajectory in all of these chronic disorders. And then we just looked at adults with these different gut-immune-brain axis disorders, and we looked and we said their immune systems, their gut permeability, is like an infant.

So the simple question is: does that same biology that benefits babies benefit grown-ups?

Lindsey Parsons:

So if you’re looking at the human milk oligosaccharides as food for Bifidobacteria in babies, that then allows them to produce short chain fatty acids. Would butyrate not be the end result of all of this in either direction?

Alex Martinez:

It’s an absolutely great question. So it’s part of it. Yeah, it’s a good part of it. One of the reasons is that butyrate actually does have its utility, and it’s been shown. But as I said, it’s only a portion of the benefit, right?

So, for example, these compounds are preferential substrates for Bifidobacteria, one of the things that they also do. So my lead compound is called 2’-FL. It actually upregulates adhesion genes in Bifidobacteria, so it actually adheres and colonizes. It also serves as a soluble receptor decoy for invasive E. coli as well as enterotoxins. So what it’s doing is it’s advancing the bugs we want, our friends, Bifidobacteria is a food source for them, but it’s also telling them to bind, and it’s helping them outcompete pathogens.

At the same time, the direct molecule itself is also binding to TLR4, so it’s blunting the immune response so that the gut can mature and heal, because it’s clearing out all those pathogens that would be activating the immune system in a permeable manner.

And it’s also changing gene expression in those colonocytes, upregulating tight junction proteins, occludins, claudins, right? So that’s where we say, I think butyrate is a great compound if you want to promote colonocyte function. That’s what colonocytes like. If you want to bathe them in that, it has utility there. I think in research it definitely can help mechanistically identify some of these actions.

But we also know that you can give the HMOs to healthy, normal adults who are free living on their own diet, not a standardized diet, and we can increase butyrate levels as well as propionate and some of the other short-chain fatty acids. So this is an upstream approach, right?

Lindsey Parsons:

That’s further upstream than butyrate, okay. So we haven’t actually gone an intro to what human milk oligosaccharides are, and I covered them a couple other times, but let’s do that so we don’t lose people.

Alex Martinez:

Oh, sure, absolutely, absolutely, I always jump ahead. Thanks for keeping me on track. Lindsey, okay, so human milk oligosaccharides are a class of oligosaccharides, basically bioactive sugars. They’re found in human milk. They’re the third largest solid component in human milk, after fat and lactose.

And what’s important about that third runner-up category is they’re actually first when it comes to non-caloric molecules in milk, because fat and lactose are used primarily for calories. Human milk oligosaccharides are amylase resistant so we cannot digest them for caloric energy.

And to give you an example of how prominent they are. In early milk, like colostrum, they’re like 15 grams per liter, and in mature milk, they’re still about five grams per liter. And there are over 200 distinct structures of them.

And this is also important, because these compounds require special synthesis. They require a lot of energy for a mother to synthesize, and so to have them in such specific diversity and concentration, and without providing caloric energy, means they’re really, really important.

Lindsey Parsons:

Did you say there’s 200 different types?

Alex Martinez:

Two hundred different molecular structures of oligosaccharides. And what’s really interesting about that is, we have data showing that, even though they’re made of the exact same thing, they have a different bond and their activity is completely different. So it’s like what I said earlier, when we think about these sugars as a molecular language, glycobiology has always been extremely hard to crack because it changes over time.

Honestly, our tools to specifically identify these are limited because they all have the same components, so when the only difference is shape, that’s really challenging to see. And so while it’s been an exciting field, there’s never been, like, how many sugar-based drugs are there, right? That’s a trick question. There’s only a few. The one that most people will know is heparin, and then there’s some aminoglycoside antibiotics. That’s it. There’s very little.

And so when we look at HMOs, those 200 distinct structures, I almost view that as the Rosetta Stone of glycobiology, because that is a mother’s repertoire to talk to the cells in the baby’s body.

Further in that 200, there’s basically three different broad categories. There’s fucosylated, and there’s acidic and neutral ones. And so all of those have different functions, and that’s what we’re figuring out right now – what they all do.

Lindsey Parsons:

I’d heard of 2’-FL. What are some of the other ones that are commercially available at this point?

Alex Martinez:

So 2’-FL is absolutely the foundational one of those, and that’s why it’s been most readily studied. And there’s a few different sources – we’ll talk a little bit later. We’re actually launching a clinical-grade one in about a month or so, because I have conversations like this, and then the logical question is, wow, we’d love to try this on ourselves and patients we work with.

And so we’re finally working to make that accessible. 2’-FL is 30% of those 200, so that’s certainly the base of the pyramid.

The other ones that I think have important functionality come from the acidic side. So those are 3’-sialyllactose and 6’-sialyllactose, and these are a great example of what I just said, because these compounds are exactly the same except they have a different bond, right? They have three prime and a six prime, different functions.

3’-SL has benefits, we actually started Intrinsic Medicine around 3’-SL, but it didn’t have the same commercial availability. So we’re always trying to balance access, availability, with the scientific rationale for something.

So 3’-SL is the primary anti-inflammatory oligosaccharide in human milk, and it’s shown to be capable of really promoting joint and bone development, as well as having effects in things like rheumatoid arthritis and juvenile idiopathic arthritis. It can have positive effects that look like today’s immunosuppressive drugs, but it’s extremely safe.

And so the question is, how is it working differently? Immunosuppressive drugs say, “the immune system is causing all this problem, we’ll take it out, we’ll eliminate it, we’ll suppress it,” and then you have a bunch of side effects, which include severe infections.

So how does 3’-SL exert similar benefits on cartilage healing and systemic inflammation going down? It activates resolution pathways. There’s an acute phase of inflammation, and then there’s a resolution side, where it resolves, and you’re taking those immune cells and saying, okay, it’s time to rebuild and stop destroying things. So that’s what it activates. That’s a really interesting mechanism.

And then 6’-SL is interesting because it’s implicated in neurological development. One of the key talking points with HMOs is that there’s probably not a one-size-fits-all. I think that’s what a lot of commercialization has been, “here’s our proprietary blend that’s perfect for you.”

But when we look at nature, we have to take the clues from nature. This is a completely dynamic system. Moms are producing different levels of HMOs based on environmental context as well as the baby. It completely changes.

We can look at epidemiology and levels of these compounds in milk for different babies. Some moms are producing lower levels, others higher levels. 6’-SL is associated with better development of executive function long term. 3’-SL is operating on connective tissue and bone. 6’-SL is operating on muscle as well.

It upregulates something called PGC-1α. What’s neat about PGC-1α is all of us can upregulate this, and if you upregulate it, it promotes muscular growth. And what is it? It’s exercise, right?

So we think a little bit about this and say, what is this 6’-SL doing in milk? And you’re like, well, how do babies grow? Babies are strong. I remember holding my son and thinking, how are you getting stronger, you just lay around all day.

And it would make sense that milk would contain a bolus of, effectively, an exercise mimetic that would enable babies to grow healthy, functional muscle. And it actually makes sense that there would be neurological, neuromuscular strength, right? You need that connection, that functional muscle. So it totally would make sense for this compound.

So I think these are probably the most mature ones. LNT is another one that I think is widely available, that one is primarily one of these bifidogenic substrates. It really is designed to enhance fermentation, and that one makes sense in the context of cross-feeding because bifidobacterium are a keystone species. They’re like bison or buffalo. And then they cross-feed all these other adjacent microbes, and that’s part of what creates the community.

And then there’s one more, which people may know of, LNNT. Does that ring a bell?

Lindsey Parsons:

Not really.

Alex Martinez:

Oh, okay. Well, that’s another one that’s commercially viable, and it lets me talk about something that’s also a little bit nerdy, but should be interesting, hopefully. And also, I think it illustrates the point about thinking of these as interspecies communication molecules.

So while we call them human milk oligosaccharides, it also makes sense to call them milk oligosaccharides, right? And that’s one of the things that actually gives me a lot of hope, especially because I want to eventually move off of anything based on animal studies and make the argument that we could do this in human organoids. And like mice, also, their milk contains 2’-FL, 3’-SL, 6’-SL, right? These are not genetically engineered mice. These are just normal mice.

And so what we’re able to do is actually look at what it does in a mouse with an organic disease or chronic condition, see how one of these oligosaccharides can benefit it, and then show that the same exact biology is occurring in human cells. So it’s a really close translational point, and that was actually part of the thesis of developing this, because there’s a reproduction issue in today’s science. Like 40 or 50% can’t be reproduced. So I think there’s a good translational basis.

But anyway, going back to LNNT, it goes beyond human milk. These oligosaccharides may predate mammalian evolution. They go way back. And the reason I’m saying this is that there is – are you familiar with helminths? Because helminths can be used medicinally, even though, how can this outside organism modulate the immune system?

Well, helminths produce LNNT, and it enables them to move through tissue without eliciting a strong immune response. And importantly, it enables them to move through tissue without inducing fibrosis, which could harm the host.

And so the team actually looked at this, and they used LNNT in burn and scarring dynamics, and lo and behold, it helps in normal, non-fibrotic healing.

Lindsey Parsons:

Just for people who don’t know what helminths are, they’re worms that people take to actually deal with severe allergies, migraines, things like that. And they let them pass through their system for a couple months. And then they take anti worm medicine to get rid of them so they don’t go out of control. And then they reintroduce them when they need them, something like that, roughly.

Alex Martinez:

Yeah, it’s crazy when I first heard it, and then I dove in and I made this connection. And I say, this is really, how does that same sugar relate to helminths to human milk. Again, that’s the intelligence and magnificence of nature. It finds something that works, and then makes sure whoever needs it gets access to it.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah, I tried for the longest time to get somebody on here to talk about helminths, and there was a guy who was selling them. And his method had been to go somewhere in Africa, I can’t recall where, walk around a dirty latrine area in his bare feet, until he knew he was going to get those worms and then go home and culture them from his stool and clean them off and sell them.

Suffice it to say that he did not want to attract too much attention to himself.

Alex Martinez:

Yes. And actually, I may know somebody if you ever want to revisit that. And it reinforces the point, which is, I think we’re on our own. It’s a grassroots effort, right? That is for sure.

Lindsey Parsons:

We’re all an n of 1, trying to figure out what the heck’s going on, right? So that’s the different types of HMOs you mentioned. A couple of them had the word lactose in them.

So I am curious, because there’s a lot of people who do not do well with lactose, who are adults, do they have lactose in them? If you’re going to take them and you’re lactose intolerant, do you need to take your lactose pills too?

Alex Martinez:

It’s a great question. This is interesting. I always urge caution. My overarching philosophy in gut health is that everything needs to be pro empowerment, right? This is our opportunity to say, okay, we know our bodies, we’re going to listen to them. And by the way, I had severe IBS-D since I was like 11, and when I finally obtained a consistent supply of 2’-FL, I have constructively cured it, 95% reduction in symptoms that were crippling and debilitating, and so that was part of a long titration. And I also thought I had a lactose intolerance component as well. Didn’t have that. I actually drink milk every single day now.

My chief medical officer is severely lactose intolerant, and is able to take these daily at our high therapeutic doses. They have lactose in the backbone, it’s never free, if that makes sense, in the gut, so it’s not recognized or metabolized as such. The issue is that the substrates for producing 2’-FL are lactose and glucose, so there always probably is going to be a trace amount in there.

And that’s where I think, on a basic precautionary level, if you’re taking 2’-FL, just take a lactose pill with it.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah, but I’ve taken 2’-FL, and I’ve never had any problems, and I am severely lactose intolerant.

Alex Martinez:

Exactly, right? We have those anecdotes. That’s also part of what we’re trying to do at Intrinsic is we’re trying to run the RCTs, the randomized controlled trials, where we can show the benefit, where we can also map all the adverse events, and then we can really have a discussion. We can actually inform it, versus where we are today, where it’s largely anecdotal, and people have their concerns.

And we’re able to say, well, actually, no one’s had an issue with this. But until I can prove that, I’m not going to say that. I’m going to say, trust your own body, it’s going to be a very trace amount of 2’-FL by itself. Part of the beautiful things it does is it actually reduces food allergies, and that’s fantastic.

So it’ll actually reduce the reactivity. One of the anecdotes, and this was part of my philosophy, I said, imagine how amazing the drugs we’d have today would be if every CEO is required to take theirs and be patient zero. And so I’ve led with that philosophy. I’ve also been on 3’-SL for several years, and in that time period I’ve had no flares of my lesion atopic dermatitis, and this is another area where it has benefit. The skin is also part of the connective tissue.

And so after I’ve had these great, fantastic results, my son had crazy atopic dermatitis. When he was born, he had severe food allergies. It turns out my wife had a bunch of food allergies that were then basically IgE antibodies being passed through the milk. And when we did allergy testing, he was EpiPen allergic to the top 21 allergens. It was scary. It was really scary. And you have this little teeny human being, and they’re in distress, and you’re like, what is he going to eat?

And I went into the literature, and I saw the food allergy data with 2’-FL, and it’s generally recognized as safe for infant formula as a supplement for infants and toddlers. So I was like, I can do this. Why is this not available? And so I started administering it to him. I know how important milk is. We literally had to go off breast milk.

And so anyone who’s donated milk, you are an angel, you’re an absolute hero, because that was really important. And then we actually had to import, by the gray market, formula from Europe as well, because the allergenic formulas in the US are pro-inflammatory. They’re corn-based.

And so then I was mixing up his formula with 2’-FL and we did sublingual immunotherapy, and he can now eat every single one of those 21 allergens. He can eat a peanut butter sandwich and doesn’t need to carry around an EpiPen. And it was all part of taking what’s out there, taking this molecule, knowing that it would provide the context for his immune system to balance itself while recognizing these antigens. And we got him completely off.

Lindsey Parsons:

So the immunotherapy you did was that through an allergist or are you talking about the low dose immunotherapy that people do?

Alex Martinez:

It was through an allergist, and it was just really, just tight, titrated allergens. But yeah, we mapped it out because normally you do it singly, and I think with the background of 2’-FL we felt comfortable going and doing all of them in this, so it was just a linear course. And it was amazing. It was amazing to see that.

Lindsey Parsons:

Okay, I see we’re already getting sort of low on time, and I feel like we maybe haven’t hit the juice of what we’re supposed to be hitting. But, but a couple quick questions, so do you derive HMOs from cow’s milk? Is that where they’re ultimately coming from?

Alex Martinez:

No, and it’s a great question. I’ll try to be brief with this one. So cows are bred for volume, high lactose. So cow milk is actually extremely low in milk oligosaccharides. It’s only 0.5 grams per liter. It’s extremely low. We don’t derive it from cow milk. Originally, some of the research ones were, but we didn’t want to do that. And some mammals have different sialic acids, for example.

So these are produced with precision fermentation. So the human gene is in a microbe that then is fermented with lactose and sugar, and then it produces 2’-FL, which is then processed. And you remove endotoxins and all the other stuff, and then you’re able to have a purified, human-identical milk oligosaccharide. And that’s important in making them cheap as well.

Lindsey Parsons:

I assume that would mean there’s no dairy proteins in them?

Alex Martinez:

So it depends on what the lactose sources are. It is minimal, and that’s part of the downstream processing.

Lindsey Parsons:

Okay, yeah. So have you guys already gotten to the level of doing RCTs or prior to that what kind of research have you done?

Alex Martinez:

Yeah, so we’ve actually done a lot of transcriptomics work, which is looking at how milk oligosaccharides impact gene expression in different cells. And so that’s where we’re some of the first to actually look at the direct effects and the systemic effects, right? Because 1 to 4% of these with oral dosing, up to 4% enter the bloodstream and they’re bioactive there, so we really wanted to understand that.

And then, through some of our partners, there are actually ongoing RCTs. So for example, we’re developing for inflammatory bowel disease. Cincinnati Children’s Hospital currently has 200 young adult and pediatric patients with ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s enrolled in a 2’-FL study that’s been going for about 52 weeks, and most importantly, the safety component was completed, and they were able to step down to younger children. So I’ll actually be catching up with them pretty soon, but actually expect us to have some results later this year.

And then we also are running our own studies. So we received Australian regulatory approval to initiate a Parkinson’s Disease study in patients with mild and moderate Parkinson’s disease and a history of constipation. So that’ll be our first sponsor-led study, and I think that one’s going to be really important, because we’re going to assess both the GI aspects, right, so we’re going to be doing irritable bowel syndrome, constipation type endpoints, but then as key secondaries, we’re going to have the motor and non-motor symptoms as well as cognitive function, and that’ll be six months of dosing.

And then we’ll also be doing full multi-omics profiling, so that’s gut microbiome, the metabolites, and then looking at the blood of these patients for a whole host of different markers, and then paralleling that with objective clinical things, balance, physical therapy, motor function assessments. So that’s going to be a great data set that we will offer to the community after that study.

Lindsey Parsons:

And what about any studies related to autism and HMOs?

Alex Martinez:

Yeah, so we are actually currently working, we’re engaging with a bunch of different autism experts. We have our own anecdotes with the compounds, and we’ll be meeting with the FDA in the second half of this year to discuss what those studies are.

And I think what’s notable about that is each one of 2’-FL, 3’-SL and 6’-SL, each have a distinct mechanism that can benefit patients with autism. And so we’ll initially start with the GI aspects, and then we’ll use that as a foundation. We do have some pretty compelling anecdotes, also supported by preclinical data on the REA cells, ability to reduce that irritability and self-harm activity. So I mean, those are really exciting things, and I know we’re at time.

But I think one of the other important aspects when we think about HMOs as therapies or even nutraceuticals is there’s no live bacteria in them. And this is really important for the autism community, because there’s a lot of aspiration and there are a lot of special dietary needs.

So these don’t need any flavor masking. 2’-FL actually tastes delicious. I don’t know but it tastes pretty good, yeah. And so you can mix it into different things. But one of the things that is always important to remember, if you’re trying to use probiotics in a vulnerable population, is that it’s a live bacteria that can thrive and colonize the human body.

And so infections have been seen in immunocompromised patients, and that’s certainly not something that we would want aspirated.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah. So I interviewed Beau Berman from Layer Origin* (use code 10STOOLPOD for 10% off) back in episode 38 a good while ago, and I know they’ve got both Pure HMO Powder that’s 2’-FL and they have the Super HMO Prebiotic mix that has the five HMOs you mentioned. So I’m wondering how, if at all, your products are going to be different from theirs? And also does colostrum have all of these things inside it? I know there’s other components in colostrum, like IgG and lactoferrin. So I’m just wondering if colostrum covers all your bases?

Alex Martinez:

So well, I’ll answer the colostrum one. So colostrum will have a full stack of pooled HMOs, but it’s not going to be at a therapeutic concentration.

Yeah. And then I think with Layer Origin, I mean, they’ve been doing it for a long time, and I’ve actually used the product. And so I don’t have my 2’-FL out yet. So I would encourage someone to try Layer Origin. I know where they get it. It’s not where I would get mine.

Calling something high purity is great. But what are the impurities? Because these are extremely bioactive compounds, and if downstream processing is not done right, you actually do have impurities. And, unfortunately, I have received batches where it doesn’t work. And so quality control is extremely important for what Intrinsic Medicine is doing.

What we’re actually doing is pharmaceutical cGMP grade material. So it’s a very strict process as a heightened standard on any food grade, GMP grade. And I think the benefit of us having a wellness component is that we’re using that same clinical standard material, which has also standardized impurity profile.

I think that’s going to be one of those important things in the next step as the HMO market is unlocked, where I encourage people to be responsible. And I actually think Layer Origin has improved their quality control. So I don’t want to disparage them, but the characterization of those residual 2% or so is so important.

If somebody is getting it and they’re not doing downstream processing, it can have endotoxin in it. These are produced in E. coli, right?

Lindsey Parsons:

So people could ask for a certificate of analysis if they want to look at what’s in any batch, I’m sure.

Alex Martinez:

Yeah. Basically, we need to move to a hyper-transparent paradigm with these compounds, and my hope is that they don’t become the next probiotic, where everyone’s putting them in everything. And because there is a target you need to hit, it’s going to be different for everyone. And if you take more, which, especially in America, we were always thinking more is better, you actually diminish the effect.

Yeah, we’re going to have a clinical basis for everything we do. And then we’ve also developed a novel titration, because that’s also really important, because most efficacious doses are ones that people will actually have tolerability issues in the early weeks, as their microbiome transfers, and as you get this huge bolus of short-chain fatty acid production.

And when you’re going into people that have a background of IBS, of GI sensitivity, yes, it’s not right for them, and they’ll lose something that if they had just taken a different way would get them to their goal, their health and wellness goal.

Lindsey Parsons:

So okay, so tell me where people can find you? You’re going to be selling these products over the counter, correct?

Alex Martinez:

Yes. So that’s going to be launched through a distinct company called Intrinsic Wellness. And I probably expect that to come out sometime next month.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah, so before this will publish, a little has been out by the time this publishes, yeah.

Alex Martinez:

So, I’ll basically be sending you the the link and everything,

Lindsey Parsons:

Okay, so I’ll put a link in the show notes. I think there’ll be an affiliate link at that point, so people can use that if they want to try something out. Any final thoughts before we get off?

Alex Martinez:

Yes, there always is something. One of the things I’ve been thinking about recently is a lot of people have taken that quantified self approach and are thinking about biomarkers, and are everyone’s tracking everything right, and they’re doing it where folks wake up in the morning and say, let me check my sleep score.

Lindsey Parsons:

Every morning!

Alex Martinez:

Right, right. And so I fully honor that, and I think it’s a great tool, but I always want to remind people to use the tool to rediscover that body awareness. And I think with GI issues, the Bristol stool form scale is absolutely your friend, and now it is a lagging indicator. And it’s going to be individualized for everyone.

And so our premise is we want to deliver the best standardized HMOs to people. We want to give them a really easy to comprehend self titration protocol to minimize any tolerability issues and help them get to their goal, which is going to be unique for everyone.

And that’s why we’re also giving the most HMOs in each bag so that they can get to a full, currently-being-clinically-tested dose, and really never have to worry about running out. So we want it to be a consumer-friendly product.

And basically, I’m developing this as my own supply. I said, if I get anything out of this, I want to supply the best 2’-FL for me and my family, and this is exactly what we’re going to deliver on and hope to share with all of you.

Lindsey Parsons:

Okay, great. Well, thanks for sharing about all this interesting stuff.

Alex Martinez:

Absolutely my pleasure. Thanks for having me, Lindsey.

April 21, 2026April 21, 2026

90% of U.S. Babies Are Missing Key Gut Bacteria – Why It Matters with Stephanie Culler, PhD

Adapted from episode 166 of The Perfect Stool podcast and edited for readability with Stephanie Culler, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of Persephone Biosciences Inc. (use code perfectstool30 for 30% off) and Lindsey Parsons, EdD.

Lindsey Parsons:

So can you tell me about your research on the infant microbiome and what you’ve learned from the study that you did?

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

Yeah, absolutely. So we’ve been studying the infant microbiome for several years now. We launched three years ago, the largest study ever done in the United States to map the infant microbiome, called the My Baby Biome Study. We published a few months ago in a Nature Portfolio journal. And what we learned from looking at the microbiome of babies from 48 out of 50 states is that most babies today, about 90% or more, are missing key types of gut bacteria called Bifidobacterium. These are really fundamentally important microbes that make the foundation of the baby gut, that help train the immune system, and we think it has connection to brain development, and with that missing means that the wrong microbes are getting into its place, and when that happens, children are much more likely to get errors in their immune system development, and we think it’s linked to a number of chronic conditions, including eczema, food allergies and asthma.

Lindsey Parsons:

So I’d always heard that the first one was the Bifido infantis. Is that what you found as well, or are there a number of them?

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

Yeah, Bifidobacterium infantis is one that we found that was the one that was over 90% missing, in addition to other species of Bifidobacterium. In our data, using AI on this really large dataset, told us that there were three types of Bifidobacterium really important for babies, for their immune system development, and for the long haul- you and I should have all these types of bacteria. But I think what was interesting about it was that about one out of four babies were missing this type of bacteria, in general, just completely gone. And again, the entire genus, the whole genus is missing, which was really surprising to us, and a sign that potentially these species are missing and going away. They’re going extinct, potentially.

Lindsey Parsons:

And what did they have instead?

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

That’s what is very concerning. Instead, they had potential pathogens, infectious organisms, those that have been associated with cancer, even colorectal cancer and other diseases. And so in that situation, it’s a very inflamed environment. Many of these organisms produce toxins, which we have validated, they also have higher levels of anti-microbial resistance right off the bat.

Lindsey Parsons:

So we’d love to get into names and details here, people do gut reports so they see these names, they know these things. So what were the pathogens? What were the other Bifidos?

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

So the three species of Bifidobacterium that are of most interest coming from this study, of course, is the Bifidobacterium infantis, the one that can use all of the human milk oligosaccharides in breast milk, special prebiotics only found in breast milk. In addition to that, are other HMO users, Bifidobacterium longum and Bifidobacterium breve; those two while they can consume some HMOs, they’re really good at degrading plant-based fibers. And so that was what was really interesting coming from our research. It’s not only the true infant strain, Bifidobacterium infantis. It’s others that support the growing gut ecosystem, starting in toddlerhood, and so those are the key Bifidobacterium that we’re finding to be super important for infant and human development. But on the flip side, when those are missing, we saw an increase in Clostridium perfringens. This is actually an organism, in some cases, that is infectious, associated with gangrene sepsis. We also saw Clostridium difficile, which is highly infectious. Many newborns do get Clostridium difficile and are treated with antibiotics. Sometimes that the pediatricians and parents detect as blood in the stool, sometimes that is linked to C. diff.

Other bacteria that we saw even connected to diseases, but also potentially could be pathogenic are the normal E. coli’s. But various strains of E. coli, we saw Klebsiella in many cases, and for some of them, they contain toxins that are associated with disease, specifically the E. coli and Klebsiella were detected in that manner. Some babies had very, I would say, low levels of Fusobacterium nucleatum, for example. This, in some studies, has been linked to colorectal cancer. That is a biomarker in that field, which we’ve extensively focused on. And so I would say that’s the key variety that we have observed, but definitely alarming, because these were newborns. This is a seven-year study. The kids are now three. Newborns should really have very high levels, maybe even upwards of 80% at least 50% of their gut should be Bifidobacterium. And so we’re now seeing, with Bifidobacterium gone, the ecosystem collapses, right? And so we see anything that’s really opportunistic, that can utilize oxygen effectively taking hold in its place.

Lindsey Parsons:

So presumably, some of these Bifidobacterium are coming during birth, or are they transferred before birth? Do we know this?

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

Well, we don’t think they’re transferred from before birth. That’s an ongoing discussion in the scientific field. But the data that we are getting, I would say, in the last about three years or so, are really suggesting, if vaginally born, they do get many of these, or much of these at birth, if mom has it or if it’s available, and namely, through exposure to the mother’s gut microbiome. The birth canal and the vaginal microbiome is very simplistic, lots of Lactobacillus, but not the key diversity we see in the gut. And so that’s how it’s been clear to scientists and done a lot of studies looking at exposure of the mother’s gut microbiome, and what’s in common with the mother’s microbiome in the child, and that’s what’s led us to think that the majority of this seeding event happens at birth, but from the mother’s gut microbiome.

And this is in complete contrast to C section born babies, because C section born babies automatically get the microbiome of the hospital, that early environment, but then also skin microbiome from families. And there’s been some really elegant, in a couple of Nature journals recently, I would say, in the last six months, studies that published looking at birth cohorts and the mother’s microbiome, and noticing that children do get Bifidobacteria, sometimes a little bit later on after birth, if a sibling has it, or it’s in the daycare environment, and so it gets shared. I would say those are a little bit harder to get, at those time points. But when we looked at our study, this was in newborns. This was the slate that we saw that most babies are missing these, these high levels of Bifidobacterium.

Lindsey Parsons:

So to get down and dirty, when babies are coming out of the birth canal, they’re supposed to be upside down, and there’s often expelling of feces, yes, this is not by accident?

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

No, it all seems to come together. And then breast milk having the prebiotics that – they’re not feeding the child. The third largest component of breast milk are human milk oligosaccharides. Over 200 kinds of them, they don’t feed the child, they feed the bacteria. So we have evolved over millennia to have this perfect link. Mom, giving the right microbes to the child, then giving breast milk that feeds those bacteria and child. It’s an interesting thing.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah. Now, do any bacteria come through the breast milk? Can you make up for a C-section with breast milk?

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

Unfortunately, no. I mean, we think that there are some bacteria, maybe some Lactobacillus, but when we look at a lot of breast milk and the microbiota, it’s a lot from the skin, if that makes sense, given that organ and the exchange of the microbes, and maybe some oral microbes from baby, for example. So it’s hard to tell, but it’s also at a very low amount. I would say that the gut microbiome has more than 1000 times bacteria for an infant than breast milk, so maybe a little bit, but from our study, as well as other studies around the world, when the child is missing these Bifidobacteria and the child is fed breast milk, the wrong microbes still thrive because they have adapted, or they have certain enzymes that can, serendipitously, also use HMOs. So it’s kind of an incomplete picture.

Lindsey Parsons:

So I know back 5-10 years ago, when I was starting to look into this whole microbiome thing, and I had, well, I have a child now, who’s 22 so I guess it’s been a while, but I don’t think I knew this at the time he was born, which was by C-section. But I know that for a while there they were talking about trying to swab the vagina and then seed the microbiome. So now that they know that it’s probably coming from the stool, are they actually, I assume they’re not swabbing the stool and putting it in the C-section baby’s mouths?

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

No but that has been a topic of discussion, but I think it has been raised a few times. And I think some groups are doing fecal transplants, but into young children. But I would say that’s not and that’s where really, how do we put what’s missing, and how do we put it back, came about.

Lindsey Parsons:

Right, right. So do all children who are born vaginally have good microbiomes then, and if not? Why not?

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

Sadly, no, the majority of the babies in our study, regardless of whether they’re vaginally born and even breastfed, their microbiomes are still compromised. And we found in our study that roughly about three out of four babies in the United States have what we determined to be an unhealthy microbiome, meaning that they either have low or no Bifidobacterium. And why we determined that this was an unhealthy state is that by year two, because of health outcomes, these are the children that are at three to four times greater risk for developing eczema, food allergies, asthma, and we think other conditions. And this is complemented by other research, and it all comes down to this: it’s nothing that we as parents have done. It has nothing to do with that. It’s all about modern life. It’s about having a baby in this modern era, because we think that the change in the microbiome has happened over the last several decades, and the impact has come from antibiotics, C-sections, potentially infant formula because it doesn’t have those prebiotics or probiotics, and also poor diet and lifestyle. And we think all of those have been impacting, one, the mother’s ability to have those microbes, and two, the child’s ability to get them or even be exposed. We see less of these microbes in the environment.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah. I look at microbiome reports all the time for my clients, and low Bifido is very common, but low butyrate producers more than that. Of course, this is a more adult microbiome, but it’s the same story. I just look at the same story over and over again. The question is, which pathogen overgrew instead of what’s supposed to be in there?

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

And I think what’s really elegant about this, and what I think truly fascinates me, is that Bifidobacterium are having a renaissance. In the last few years, there have been so many high-impact publications, because we’re finally now getting to the genetics and the function of these miraculous bugs. There’s a reason why the human gut microbiome starts with them. They produce the right acids, or short-chain fatty acids, the acetate and lactate, which help bring down the pH of the early gut, which is exceptionally important, because that inhibits pathogens from growing. But in addition to that, they also have secret weapons, they produce bacteriocins. These are peptides that can bind to potential pathogens and inhibit them from growing further. And in addition to that, from the right HMOs, they produce metabolites, basically indole-3-lactic acid, 4-HPA, these tryptophan metabolites that come from Bifidobacteria that engage the immune system to reduce inflammation and allow it to develop properly. So they really set the stage for proper development of the gut, but also just how the gut works, because the byproducts, you know what it makes, acetate and lactate, it also gets eaten by butyrate producers. And so if you put back Bifidobacteria, you should, and we see in our clinical trials as well as others, that all of a sudden the butyrate producers are happy. They’re growing and they’re producing more butyrate. So it’s an ecosystem of cross-feeding that’s really important here that sometimes people don’t think about as well.

Lindsey Parsons:

So then, have you studied how the microbiome continues to develop over those early years, and when does the child reach a more adult microbiome?

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

The adult microbiome starts to, or the child’s microbiome starts to look much more like you and I’s around age three to four. So as they go into kindergarten, it looks much more like ours. It is still developing over time, but that rapid, dynamic phase, from starting out with just a handful of microbes a little after birth, stops around age three or four. But it is a highly dynamic period, because the whole ecosystem is actually blossoming at that point, from a dozen microbes to hundreds, like what you and I have.

Lindsey Parsons:

Now, I know that autism is on huge rise, and I’m wondering whether there’s any research between the microbiome and autism.

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

I would say there’s a lot of research being done right now globally, in fact, and a number of key publications are starting to suggest that the microbiome is very much a biomarker. We are noticing in autistic children that their microbiome is somewhat different, and we’re trying to better understand what that means. And I think there is emerging data to start to look into causal relationships, as well as how microbiome transplants have been shown to be helpful for adolescents with autism. So I think the field is really emerging in that area, and that’s very much of interest to us too: if we can help better develop the infant microbiome, is there an opportunity to reduce rates of autism? Could we have an impact? And then, on the flip side, can microbiome modulation be used effectively as a treatment?

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah, and a lot of children I know are getting lots of antibiotics, sometimes at birth, because of, I don’t know, maybe like strep B or because of C-sections or whatever else. So what can you do? And/or your child’s born by a C section? What can you do at that point? How early should you intervene?

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

Yeah, absolutely. You know what the global data is really suggesting, in addition to the My Baby Biome study, is that this should be standard of care. Kids today, modern kids, need to be exposed to it in whatever way, right, and especially those via C-section and those that have received antibiotics. Kids and infants that have received antibiotics within the first year of life have an elevated risk. This is well documented, elevated risk for atopic disease conditions like eczema, asthma, and food allergies. And so supplementation with Bifidobacterium, and if you can, HMOs, is very important to enable that ecosystem. And it’s the right species of Bifidobacterium, right? It’s not Bifidobacterium lactis that is in yogurt, and it’s not Lactobacillus. I know so many probiotics are Lactobacillus. Bifidobacterium, specifically these ones that we were talking about, infantis, breve, and longum, are keystone members of the gut, right? Without them, the ecosystem collapses, right? Lactobacillus is a transient member and has nothing to do with this. It does not colonize, for example. These colonize and are permanent partners to us, right? So it’s a very different thing.

Lindsey Parsons:

Okay, so tell me about the product that you developed to supplement the infant microbiome, and how it was developed and when it’s indicated.

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

Yeah. So we, based on the My Baby Biome data and the AI analysis, we thought we saw these three species, B. infantis, B. breve, B. longum, and we realized that that’s what’s needed for these babies’, basically, microbiomes to be rebuilt and to thrive, right, to reprogram them, essentially. And so in our lab, 20 feet away from me, we isolated many, many strains of those three key species from babies who had it. Our platform, we take in the whole stool so we’re able to preserve the microbes there. And so through extensive microbiology, we isolate a number of these strains. And because, prior to infant microbiome research, we were working in oncology to develop therapeutics, we had developed a whole product screening platform. Essentially, we have developed what we call a microbiome avatar. It’s a microbiome on a chip, so it simulates the microbiomes of babies, and so we could screen many probiotic candidates, those key Bifidobacterium species along with the right prebiotic, which in this case are HMOs. And from that screening, we found a candidate that was very robust, that could work across all microbiome backgrounds and commercialized that product. And we launched that late last year, it’s available direct to consumers, but we’ve also completed a clinical trial on this in infants and toddlers. And it’s a dried powder, easy to use, can be mixed in milk, yogurt, as a child gets older, etc. But it can be used for long-term immune system development, gut development, but a lot of acute things like constipation for infants, colic, we know that’s connected to gut dysbiosis or dysfunction, general fussiness, crying with babies. We’ve seen it have a tremendous impact in diaper rash and from parents, they’re starting to say it helps with other kinds of rashes and conditions like eczema and food allergies, which eventually we would like to take in a more rigorous clinical trial in partnership with the FDA.

Lindsey Parsons:

So I know that there are baby formulas that have HMOs- Are the ones that are in your product any different from the ones that are in baby formulas?

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

Slight overlap. This is a proprietary blend, and we have four HMOs, and they cover the three structural or functional classes of HMOs, and they’re formulated at a ratio that mimics how they are found in breast milk. And one tidbit to know is that there are some moms, about 20% of mothers worldwide, who have a mutation in one of their HMO genes, and as a consequence, they can’t produce the major HMO, which is 2′-FL (fucosylated) HMO. So that is one of the components of our HMO blend. So even if a child is breastfed and getting HMOs, this could be really helpful, because those moms likely do not know that they have a mutation in their FUT2 gene.

Lindsey Parsons:

Oh, is this like the non-secretor?

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

FUT2 non-secretors, thank you!

Lindsey Parsons:

Oh, wow. Because I know if people have that, if they do a DNA report and I run it through my tool, I can tell them that they’re a non-secretor. I didn’t think about.

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

So most people don’t know their secretor status, but those who do, this is the kind of product that’s beneficial to them, absolutely.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah. I don’t have a lot of women of childbearing age in my client group, but I do have a couple, including some people who are trying to conceive, and some of them do DNA testing. That’s great. I can tell them if they’re non-secretors. I know those people also need to work harder at feeding their own microbiome in terms of fiber and such.

I know that people with new babies are super paranoid about giving them anything they might perceive as dangerous or unnatural, and doctors are wary. So if you have a child who already has a good microbiome, could taking your product cause any harm?

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

No, I mean this is completely natural. These are all isolated from babies. They exist in us. And the HMOs are identical to what’s in breast milk. And we haven’t seen that, you know. We have given the product to babies that already have some of these microbes. In fact, it helps with the development of the butyrate producers. And these microbes, again, reduce inflammation. So basically, everybody can use it at some point.

Lindsey Parsons:

So I understand that you originally started your company, and you’ve already mentioned this to research the link between microbiome and cancer. So can you talk at this point about what microbiota are associated with cancer?

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

So we’ve been looking at microbiomes and cancer in two ways. One, how can it be a part of how someone gets colorectal cancer? Could we think about intervening in somebody’s 20s to prevent colorectal cancer? That’s been a longstanding interest, because there are many microbes in the gut that have shown to be causal. The Fusobacterium nucleatum that I mentioned earlier is causal. It’s been demonstrated to cause colorectal cancer, as well as various strains of E. coli and even Klebsiella that contain a toxin called colibactin. It causes DNA breakage that can lead to mutations and has also been shown to cause colorectal cancer in that link. So that’s from the prevention side.

From the treatment side, we’ve been really interested. There have been so many studies. In fact, even last week in Nature Medicine, there was a publication on fecal transplants from healthy individuals into people with advanced-stage non-small cell lung cancer, and how that could change how they respond to treatment and improve their response. It’s been shown that microbiome alterations, essentially an unhealthy microbiome, and I’ll define that in a second, one that has much higher levels of pathogens, is more linked to non-response to treatment. This is seen with immunotherapies, but also chemotherapies and other treatments, namely in immunotherapies.

We’ve been trying to understand, through the collection of a lot of microbiome samples from cancer patients, what is that “secret sauce” of the gut microbiome for those that respond, and how could we incorporate that into a microbiome therapeutic. And what makes this full circle for us is that when we started to look at the infant microbiome and see the dysbiosis, the damage when Bifidobacteria are missing, we saw a lot in common with advanced-stage cancer patients that we were profiling. They basically have an ecosystem that collapses, high levels of C. difficile, Fusobacteria, Bacteroides fragilis (B. frag), E. coli, Klebsiella, all these potentially infectious organisms, and many of them have had so many rounds of antibiotics, unfortunately, because they are immunocompromised. They do get sick more often and are at risk of bacterial infections.

And so that was, for us, the lightbulb moment: that we really need to do something in infants, because we saw so many commonalities in what’s happening in this older population with advanced disease. We started to ask how a child’s gut could begin in a state that resembles what we see in adults with end-stage disease. And that’s why we were so poised very quickly to address what’s happening in infants, because it’s a mini version of what we see in adults.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah. So on my stool test that I see, I often see people with Fusobacterium. They don’t tell you. On one of the ones I do, it doesn’t specify which species it is; they just tell you the genus. And on the other, I do see it. And I have done a Tiny Health, which is one of the companies that’s interested in the infant microbiome. I’ve done a couple of those myself. I saw the Fusobacterium nucleatum, and I use this dental rinse because it comes from the mouth a lot of times, and I give it to everybody who has Fusobacterium, because I’m like, I don’t know which one you have, but none of them are good. Like, there are eight or nine of them; every one is pathogenic. So I always give everybody the DentalCidin and see if we can wipe it out. And sure enough, in my next report, I didn’t have any more. So to some extent, I think it is coming in through the mouth.

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

Many of them are oral microbes. And there was a Nature Microbiology publication last year that did go down to the strain level of Fusobacterium nucleatum and isolated, I don’t know, 50 or so isolates, because there was this link to mouthwash. And, not all of them were bad, but many of them did have the toxins, right. But to your point, it’s almost impossible to know unless you’re doing that deep sequencing and identifying those toxins. It’s actually something very, very difficult to do. That was the crux of that publication.

But yeah, as we get older, thinking about inflammation, the microbiome should be in our gut. It should be anoxic. There shouldn’t be any oxygen. And so we know that things are starting to change in the wrong way, or at least start going unhealthy if there’s some tolerance to oxygen, and if there are species that are thriving in that. So that’s a very good point that you’re bringing up.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah, I know that’s a super common phenomenon. I see where people have low butyrate producers, they have high Proteobacteria. I know that they’ve got too much oxygen in their colon, and I give them butyrate or tributyrin, which is one of my products, to try and reduce that oxygen, to try and promote the butyrate producers, and then, of course, fibers, to try and remake that microbiome. So I’m on the job. But yeah, a lot of people out there do not know about this stuff and are just suffering unnecessarily and potentially leading to future sickness and disease, and all that.

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

Absolutely, and also physicians, because this is such cutting-edge research that they may not have been exposed to when they were in school, right, and in further updates. It’s still really in the research phase right now.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah. So how long do you think it’ll be before we have a gut supplement that people could take that is something short of a full FMT and much more affordable than the current products? I know there’s like, Vowst and Rebyota and stuff that, yeah, they could take prior to doing immunotherapy.

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

You know, that is my dream. That is the mission of the company. I unfortunately do think it’s going to take 10 to 15 years. We have been as a company in this space for almost nine years, so nearly a decade of research, and our tools have only gotten really good in the last few years, our bioinformatics analysis, our AI capabilities, but also how we sequence. When we first started sequencing microbiomes eight years ago, 50% was dark matter. We didn’t know what a lot of them were. When we first sequenced my microbiome, 50% was unknown. We’re now 99.99% confident in what we’re calling as being in the gut, but because we now know that today, we have to start figuring out the function. So I still think we’re a ways away. We have good biomarkers in oncology coming to fruition, but how you translate that into the product is still the biggest challenge in the field. And so that’s why for us, we took a step back, and we’re like, let’s literally take baby steps. Let’s fix the baby microbiome first, and then keep going, and then get back to adults, and then eventually the cancer therapies.

Lindsey Parsons:

So in the adults, are you finding that they are completely depleted? Because I see microbiome reports, and even the people who are the worst off, they still have some of virtually everything. They still have some of the good butyrate-producing microbes, just not like they’re depleted, but they’re not . . .

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

Yeah, the very low levels we don’t see, like in the B. infantis, because it’s different. It’s developing, right? We as adults, we’ve already developed something, that has developed. It may just be starting to get worse over time. And really what we see, we do see two things. We do see a lack of diversity. So for some of these advanced-stage cancer patients, we may see 50 or 70 microbes, versus several hundred. And then when we see lack of diversity, it’s also that it’s dominated by a few species. So you may see 40% E. coli, you may see 20%, so very imbalanced. So lack of diversity and imbalance are the key signs of what we’ve been observing.

Lindsey Parsons:

So in my work, what I’ve started to do a lot more of is not try and feed them the probiotics, but rather just feed them with the prebiotics that feed those microbes. So I’m wondering if your research is looking into that aspect of it?

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

Absolutely. And I think for a lot of people, that’s actually an area that we’re working on in food as medicine with our partnerships. That’s another area we think is really important. One thing is to put back the microbes, to your point, but then we need the right prebiotics through food, potential additional supplementation. I think that for a lot of people, prebiotic supplementation, if they already have a decent repertoire, could be helpful. But then for a lot of people who do need massive shifts, that’s when you have to incorporate the probiotics, but we need to be very mindful. And I think this is where the science is going, is that the prebiotics that you’re giving, you really should tailor it in some way to the probiotics so that they can thrive if you’re making that intervention, because you do really want to shift that population.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah, yeah. And what I mean, what I try and do is tailor it to the microbiome. So I see, okay, they’ve got good enough levels of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, but they have low Roseburia, and, you know, each fiber feeds a certain bug, and I try and build it up to do that.

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

Or many of them, right? So, yes, yeah.

Lindsey Parsons:

I mean to the extent that I know the good butyrate producers, and they’re low on butyrate, which virtually everybody I see is.

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

Pretty much, you know, in the United States, that’s going to be common. Yeah, they have low to no Bifidobacteria, low butyrate producers. Everybody can improve on that.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah, my message to everybody is, eat more beans and lentils.

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

Yes, thank you, and anything fermented.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yes, but the Bifido doesn’t come in fermented foods so much, do they?

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

A little bit. There’s some, like kefirs, that have it incorporated. You can here and there. I don’t know actually how much gets in, to be honest. But, yeah.

Lindsey Parsons:

So can you tell everybody where they can find you and your products?

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

Yes. So the products are available on our website: Persephone.bio (use code perfectstool30 for 30% off)

Lindsey Parsons:

And so there’s going to be a code for my listeners for a discount?

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

So for all the listeners today, you get a special code, perfectstool30 that you can enter at checkout for a 30% discount.

Lindsey Parsons:

Okay, awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing that with me. Any final thoughts before we get off?

Stephanie Culler, PhD:

No, thank you for your time.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah. Well, thank you.

April 7, 2026April 7, 2026

The Hidden Role of Minerals in Energy, Digestion and Detoxification with Caroline Alan

Adapted from episode 165 of The Perfect Stool podcast and edited for readability with Caroline Alan, mineral enthusiast, educator and the co-founder of BEAM Minerals and Lindsey Parsons, EdD.

Lindsey Parsons:

So I’m wondering how you went from software development and business consulting to educating about and selling minerals?

Caroline Alan:

Well, you know it happened because I burned out from that very intense career, and it was about 10 years ago I had bad inflammation in my gut. I had been gluten-free for many years because I am gluten intolerant, but I could never get over the inflammation. I also had bad inflammation in my mouth, with bone loss in my teeth and periodontal disease that just had gone on for several years. I had recurring sinus infections. I had flatlined adrenals. They’d been flatlined for over a year. I’ve been to multiple practitioners trying to find some way to jumpstart them. I also didn’t sleep through the night. I woke up many times a night. I was deep into perimenopause at the time, so my hormones were also out, and my thyroid, I struggled. I have Hashimoto’s, so I’ve struggled with my thyroid over the years. So all of these things led up to, at a certain point, a complete inability to continue in my high-powered work career.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah. So what led you to the minerals? How did you figure out that that was the issue?

Caroline Alan:

Yeah, well, so, like many of us, we’ve been taught to treat our bodies like we have parts, pieces, systems, and tissues, and we have all these different specialists. If we have hormone problems, we go to a hormone doctor; if we have thyroid problems, we go to a thyroid doctor; if we have skin problems, we go to a skin doctor; if we have sleep problems, we go to a sleep doctor, etc. And nobody was looking at me holistically, until I met my now business partner, and he looked at me and said, maybe you should try these minerals.

I was reticent. I had been trying so many different things, but these were really easy. They were liquid, they tasted like water, and I just started taking them. Over the space of eight or nine months, all of the symptoms I described to you, except that I still take thyroid replacement, cleared one by one, slowly over weeks and months. Even my doctors and my dentist noticed. My dentist said, “Oh my gosh, what’s changed? The tissues are pink and healthy. Your periodontal disease is gone. What happened?”

My adrenal tests showed my adrenals being a third of the way up the chart after four months of taking the minerals. As a result, I went back to my then friend, now business partner, and asked, “What’s the deal? No one ever mentioned minerals to me. How could this be?” He started sharing little pieces of research, an article about this, an article about that, and I just went deep. I went down the rabbit hole and kept going for many years, studying minerals, what they are, how they work in the body, why we’re depleted, and how replenishment occurs effectively.

Lindsey Parsons:

Interesting.Yeah. So what gave you the persistence to keep going? Did you see results really quickly? Was there something that was fixed quickly that made you, keep going?

Caroline Alan:

Well, first, the interesting thing was, I’m not a huge supplement taker. I don’t like taking pills. Just some people struggle to swallow pills, and I’m one of those people, but this was liquid and it was easy to take. And strangely, every morning I woke up, my body said, I want my minerals, which was new for me with any other supplement. So it wasn’t like I started to feel better and I was like, oh, great.

I will say that when I went to my dentist, after going to three different dentists over three years trying to figure out what was wrong with my mouth, when I went to my dentist, and that was just two months in, she said, oh my gosh, what’s happened? That was my first cue. And that’s when I started going, okay, these actually might be helping me, and that’s when I really got more religious about taking them daily.

But I didn’t really start to feel the longer term effects – for example, I was getting sinus infections because I’d had mold exposure. So I was getting sinus infections every four to six weeks, I mean really that often, terrible headaches and pain, and I just stopped getting them. So it’s funny when things change slowly. It’s one thing if you have a headache, you take an Advil, you feel better in a couple hours, or in 20 minutes, 30 minutes, right? But with minerals, they are such foundational support. They’re what I call ecosystem support. And like most ecosystems, those changes occur slowly over time.

And so because we learn to notice changes that happen quickly, I didn’t really notice the changes until I would look back and went, wow, I’m not eating so much. I’m not craving sugar. Oh, I’m sleeping through the night. I noticed in retrospect, yeah.

Lindsey Parsons:

Okay, so can you explain the role of minerals in the body?

Caroline Alan:

Yes, I love to explain the role of minerals. So first of all I want people to understand, if you look around the room that you’re in, or if you’re in a car or walking, and you look at all of the structure around you, it’s all made of minerals. Every structural element in the universe is minerals. So minerals are the substrate for all structure in the world, including all of the structure in your body. So that’s the first kind of, whoa, wait a minute. That’s actually true. Okay.

The second piece is that minerals are, the way I like to describe it, if you’re going to build a campfire, you’re going to need some wood, and you’re going to need some tinder or something to start the wood, and then you’re going to need a match. Inside of your cells, you have something called the mitochondria. And mitochondria are energy-generating units that live inside your cells. They’re like the match. They have the ability to turn fuel that you take in through your mouth and gets absorbed into your cells, they have the ability to turn that fuel into energy, but you have to have the fuel.

And the primary fuel that you use at a cellular level in your body is minerals and amino acids. Your body makes a lot of amino acids. It makes no minerals, and they all have to come in through the foods you eat and the water you drink.

Lindsey Parsons:

Okay, so I deal with people who have gut health issues in my coaching and that’s the majority of my podcast audience. So I’m wondering if these folks are more mineral depleted than the average person. And if so, why and why is the average person mineral depleted in any case?

Caroline Alan:

Yeah, so let’s talk about mineral depletion, because it’s so interesting, because we should be able to get minerals and all the nutrition that we need from the foods we eat. The problem is that our foods today are way less nutrient dense than they were historically. And there’s many research pieces and data that have been developed over time about this.

So to get the same nutrition from an apple that your grandfather ate today, you’d have to, depends on who you speak with, but most people say between four and seven apples, so it’s that much lower, and it’s across all things that are grown in soil, and even the meats that you eat; those animals also ate plant material. So it’s everywhere. So you cannot get enough minerals. You’d have to eat so much food, it’s really not possible to get all of the minerals that you need from the foods you eat anymore.

And to exacerbate the situation, most of us, particularly in the US, drink filtered water. When you drink water from a well or we used to drink water from streams, of course, you shouldn’t do that today, but that water had a lot of minerals in it. Even tap water that came out of your faucet in your kitchen has a lot of minerals in it. When you filter that out using reverse osmosis or distilled or even a Brita filter, you’re taking those minerals out, and now you have what we call empty water, and that water doesn’t actually have a good way to get absorbed into your body. It mostly goes straight through you, and in the process, it’s actually flushing more minerals. So this problem of mineral depleted water as well as mineral-depleted foods has created a curve of mineral depletion in humans that is radically going up.

Lindsey Parsons:

And so people with gut health issues, I assume, have it worse because of poor absorption.

Caroline Alan:

Yeah. So because most minerals that we’re going to talk about don’t require the gut, which is really one of the most exciting things, but there are so many things that are attacking gut health, like glyphosate as an example, which creates all sorts of problems in the gut, as well as chronic stress and all sorts of things.

Okay, but one of the things I want to talk about with gut health in particular is one of the contributing factors being that your body is not able to generate enough energy. So if you think about energy generation happening inside your cells with this mitochondria and the wood and paper, the fuel, the amino acids and the minerals. If you don’t have enough minerals anywhere in your body, your body can’t generate enough energy, and so it has to pick and choose what it can do and what it can’t do.

When you’re fully mineralized, your body generates about 1200 watts of electricity, but many of us who are mineral depleted are only able to generate maybe 800 or maybe 500. If you’re an elderly person who eats really badly and is in a care facility where the food is, there’s very little nutrition in it.

So what happens is the body can’t clear the inflammation. It can’t find homeostasis or balance, and so it just keeps the lights on. It’s going to keep your gut peristalsis basically going, but it’s not going to be able to clear that inflammation. So that’s one of the first things with minerals and the gut in general.

If you have SIBO, IBS, Crohn’s, if you’ve got inflammation, or you have really bad microflora and enzyme production is not on top, you’re not even able to break down much of the food that you’re putting into you, that’s making your situation even worse. So there’s a whole body of knowledge in looking at the gut.

And one of the tricks about minerals is when people use single minerals, like take magnesium for sleep, or they use multi minerals that are in salt-based electrolytes, one of the things I help people understand is that your gut is a freshwater system. It’s like the rivers and lakes on the earth. The ocean is like your bloodstream, it’s a salt water system.

So when you take concentrations, which are relatively large concentrations, of salt based electrolytes, and you put them into your gut on a regular basis – some people take one, two, three stick packs of salt-based electrolytes a day, what they’re actually doing is disrupting their gut microbiome. They’re throwing it completely out of balance, and all of that salt is not supporting healthy gut microflora.

So that’s one of the first things that we talk about relative to minerals. If you have gut problems, you need to not be using salt-based electrolytes. You absolutely need minerals and you need micronutrients, but the salt-based electrolytes are not going to be supporting a healthy homeostasis and balance in your ecosystem.

Lindsey Parsons:

So if you are someone who is clearly sodium deficient, I see that sometimes because people’s chloride levels are low, you see low blood pressure. How can you slowly get enough sodium in the course of a day?

Caroline Alan:
Yes, and that’s such a great question, because one of the things that we think about when, let’s say someone has a low sodium issue, and we talked to lots of people who are using tons of salt-based electrolytes, because they heard in the past, as a kid, they had low sodium issues, okay? My business partner is actually one of those people. He used to take salt capsules as a young person, because he had so much cramping.

The thing is, the issue is not about the quantity of salt. The issue is about absorption of the salt. So what you want to do, rather than creating large concentrations of salt, which the body when you put a large concentration of salt in your gut, what does the gut do? It says, I’ve got a concentration, and I need to balance this, and I need to get rid of the excess. So now what happens is, you urinate more, now you’re actually flushing your system, and you’re not absorbing.

So instead, what you need to do is, sure, put a pinch of salt in your glass of water if you want, but taking salt-based concentrate, milligrams of salt every day, unless you’re eating a low salt diet, it’s very hard to have. I mean, unless you’re really focused on eating a low salt diet, it’s hard to get no salt. So the issue is not about the quantity of the mineral in it, it’s about how to make it better absorbed. And that’s, again, what we’re going to get to, which I’m so excited to introduce you to, is the plant-based minerals, because they have the capacity to enhance the absorption and the assimilation of minerals and salts into the cell, where they can actually have their positive impact, instead of creating concentrations that create imbalance and actually exacerbate the situation and create flushing of the system.

Lindsey Parsons:

Okay, well, we will get there, but I have a couple other questions before we get there. So I’m wondering if you mentioned that the reverse osmosis is problematic? I think you mentioned other filtered water. So what kind of water, and knowing that spring water comes in plastic bottles, and we don’t want a lot of plastic, what’s the best choice for water? Should we do a reverse osmosis with then re-mineralizing?

Caroline Alan:

So what I always recommend at this point, because most people aren’t going to buy glass bottles of mineral water every day because it’s very expensive, is to use your reverse osmosis filtration system, or whatever system you’re using, and remineralize. The trick is, you don’t want to remineralize with rocks, shells and bones, because, first of all, those are not necessarily ionized, and ionized means at their component size ready for absorption. So let’s say you mean putting a pinch of salt in your water. That works because salt ionizes very easily. What it means is it actually connects to that water molecule then you drink it. It’s probably not going to, it would over a very long period of time, but it’s not going to precipitate out and end up at the bottom of your glass, okay, but most minerals that are made of the rock, shells and bones will do that. What I recommend highly is getting a liquid mineral that’s already ionized that you can remineralize your filtered water with.

Lindsey Parsons:

Okay, so you’re not talking about the system that comes with that, but more like liquid minerals that Beam makes.

Caroline Alan:

I haven’t looked well enough into the reverse osmosis filtration systems that do remineralize the water. When we learn about the plant-based thing, you’re going to understand why they actually are the ultimate solution for mineralizing water.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah. Okay. So the other question I was wondering about is, does eating organic or eating lots of fruits and vegetables help with the lack of minerals?

Caroline Alan:

Well, here’s the trick, and I want to give people an understanding of this. When a plant grows in the soil, the way that it creates all of its structure and generates the energy for its growth is by taking minerals and amino acids from the soil.

And when it takes those minerals from the soil, in nature, what happens is the plant grows. At a certain point, it dies and decomposes and delivers that mineral content back into the soil, whether it’s in the forest, in an organic garden, or in some production farming setting. If the plant dies and decomposes, the minerals in that plant go back into the soil.

But we cultivate and whether you’re eating organic or you’re eating production farmed, regular, conventional food, it’s you take it, you grow it in the soil, you take it away from the soil, you process it, you eat it, and you dispose of its waste far from where it was grown. And what happens over time, even in your backyard garden, is that soil gets mineral depleted.

So the same problem that we have with our body and getting the minerals into our body is the exact same issue we have with the soil, which is, how do we effectively get minerals back into you? You can’t just take some powdered calcium and throw it on the soil and expect that to be bioavailable to the plants. It’s not. It has to be broken down just the way it does in your gut, all the way down to its ionic chemical components, so that it can be absorbed.

And in soil, that happens via microbial processes. Microbes go through a sequence of processes, and they actually deliver these complexes, which are mineral complexes that roots of plants can absorb.

Lindsey Parsons:

Okay so let’s hear about these plant-based minerals.

Caroline Alan:

Thank you so much. The reason I’m so excited by plant-based minerals is that they’re truly nature’s technology for mineral replenishment of all cellular systems on earth. Years ago, some scientists recognized that soldiers and athletes were mineral depleted, and they went into their labs and created salt-based electrolytes as an emergency solution. If somebody was crashing, they would give them those things, and they worked for that short-term situation, but they were never meant to be used on a regular basis.

If they had instead looked at nature and said, how does nature replenish minerals into cells, considering that at a mitochondrial level, like an energy generation level, inside your cells, your cells work just the way a cell in a redwood tree works at the energy generation level. So all cells on earth, all cellular life, requires minerals, and the body makes no minerals. It makes a lot of amino acids, but makes no minerals. They all have to come from the outside.

So nature, in its infinite wisdom, developed a solution, and that solution is something that’s naturally created through that microbial process, that breaking down, degradation of plant material as it slowly breaks down through this microbial process. The result are these two molecules, one called fulvic and the other called humic, and they are like these tools for mineral replenishment of cellular life and detoxification of cells and cellular systems.

Lindsey Parsons:

So, I had heard of them before, and I’d taken them before in pill format, and I think something that may have given me pause at some point was one of them, and maybe this was the California prop 65 warning. There was something about heavy metals, lead maybe, I can’t remember what it was exactly. Can you speak to that?

Caroline Alan:

Yeah, absolutely, I can. So I’ve done a huge amount of study about heavy metals, particularly related to plant-based minerals and in humic and fulvic, and there’s a lot of misunderstanding about heavy metals in general. And since we’re not having a whole podcast about heavy metals, if you ever want to do that, we could jump in and just talk about heavy metals, because there’s a lot to understand, and a lot of people are really scared about them, and they should be, particularly when those heavy metals are coming from manufacturing effluent or mining or from man made issue, things that are man made and then they’re throwing this waste out into the world. However, if you just dug down anywhere in the earth, 15 feet, and you took some soil, there’s going to be heavy metals in there. The difference is, there are different kinds of heavy metals. There’s inorganic heavy metals, and there’s organic heavy metals. And organic heavy metals are bound to the carbon molecule, and they have a totally different structure, so they’re different.

There is, I think it’s like 0.02 parts per million greater than the lead level identified in the California prop 65 in our MicroBoost product.

Here’s the interesting thing. So a few years ago, a heavy metals toxicity specialist, she’s an MD from China, she works in the US, and her main focus is detoxing people, particularly from mercury and lead. And she called me up, she wanted to talk to me. I was a little worried, and she said, I need to tell you that your MicroBoost product is the first product that I have used in the last 10 years that has effectively moved the dial, lowered lead and mercury toxicity in my patients. She said, I am using it with everybody now.

So here’s the interesting thing, and this is where we get to talk about how the molecules work. And this is so exciting to me. So let’s talk about the humic molecule. The humic molecule, if your fist was a humic molecule, if you made a fist and you think, that’s a humic molecule, and you thought of a cell, the cell would be the size of a head of a pin, so it’s much larger than a cell, and the humic molecule is called a polyelectrolyte molecule, so different parts of its surface have different polarities. It’s a very unique molecule. There are very few molecules like that on Earth. It’s an incredibly strong electrolyte molecule, meaning it has extremely strong electrical charge and it acts like a magnet.

So even though there are heavy metals associated with the humic molecule, as there are with every soil, just pick up soil on the earth, even deep down where there’s no pollutants, there’s going to be heavy metals, but the heavy metal molecules that are part of the humic molecule, the scientific term is they have no valence. They have no ability to come free. They’re completely bound in the molecule, and they actually act like magnets in your bloodstream and in your gut.

So they literally travel through your system and pick up and bind other molecules. So this humic molecule hangs out in your gut or your bloodstream, binding with heavy metals, bio waste, toxins, nanoplastics, because nanoplastics have heavy metals in them, free radicals, viral detritus, spike proteins, all sorts of different things. And this molecule gets all these things sticking to it with glyphosate. It actually even will build a film around the glyphosate, making it so the glyphosate can’t have its negative effects in your system anymore, so it completely sequesters it.

And these electrical bonds that are made with the heavy metals are very strong. At a certain point the molecule gets so heavy it falls out of solution and it leaves the body through all the elimination channels. So it doesn’t require a liver, it doesn’t require a kidney. It uses your tears, your sweat, your snot, your saliva, your ear wax. It uses your urine and feces, of course, as well. And when you think about nature, and you think about nature creating a tool for detoxification of cellular systems anywhere on the earth, because there’s always been concentrations of chemicals or different things that were toxic to cellular life. So for cellular life to thrive, there had to be a way for removing those things, and that’s what humic represents. It represents a method of gentle, continuous detoxification of cellular systems.

Lindsey Parsons:

And how does that work with the fulvic? Is there some synergy then?

Caroline Alan:

Yeah, fulvic is different, so it’s very cool. Fulvic now, if you make a fist with your hand and imagine that your fist is a cell, the fulvic molecule now is the size of the head of a pin. It’s very, very small. And the beautiful thing about fulvic is that your body recognizes fulvic as a beneficial substance, because your cells developed on this earth just the way all the other cellular life did.

And so if you’ve never taken fulvic, never had fulvic in your body, and you put it in your body, fulvic, your body goes, ah, fulvic, great. And what it does is a channel opens in your cell. It says, fulvic, come on in. I recognize you. You’re a good thing. And it brings the fulvic molecule in.

Now the cool thing about fulvic, if you imagine a magnet and imagine if metal pieces were connected to that magnet, the fulvic molecule is a very strong electrolyte molecule, and it attracts and holds minerals and nutritional elements to it. So it’s a delivery system for minerals into cells. So the cell, it hits the cell wall, the cell wall says, oh, that’s fulvic. Let’s let it in, open the channel, the fulvic goes into the cell, and then it does what no other molecule on earth can do. It changes its polarity, and it drops those minerals and nutritional elements into the cell. So it literally is a delivery system for minerals into the cell.

Now it’s in an opposite polarity, and it travels around inside the cell, picking up bio waste, toxins, heavy metals, nano plastics, viral detritus, Spike proteins, all of these different problematic substances. And it carries those out of the cell. It changes its polarity again and drops them off in the bloodstream, where its partner, the humic molecule, then binds them, gathers them, cleans them up, and takes them out. I call humic Mother Nature’s janitor, and fulvic, the intercellular transporter, delivers nutrients and bio waste and toxins out.

Lindsey Parsons:

So does that mean you should take them at the same time, or in some sequence?

Caroline Alan:

What I say is, we’re so used to thinking, I take a supplement and read the label and it tells you, take it at night, take it with food, without all of that. But you have to understand, these are nature’s tools, and nature couldn’t define how they needed to be used. So it had to just make them work, period.

So there are certainly people who like to take the fulvic in the morning, because then all of the food that you’re going to be eating and breaking down in your gut throughout the day is going to have a better possibility of uptake into your system. It may or may not be true, sounds like a great story to me, but from my perspective, if you are constantly using fulvic, and you have it in your system all the time, then it doesn’t matter when you take it.

And then sometimes people will take the humic at night to support the natural detoxing processes that are happening when you’re sleeping, including brain respiration, because these cross the blood brain barrier.

Lindsey Parsons:

And the fulvic is the Electrolyze, and the humic is the Micro-Boost, correct?

Caroline Alan:

Yeah, and we have them separated really for two reasons. One, because Electrolyze, it’s such an enhancer of energy production in the body, for someone who’s a performance athlete or someone who really struggles with gut problems, with absorption issues, they might want to take more of that, but because, especially if they have Crohn’s or different autoimmune problems, their systems can be very sensitive to detox.

I’m actually one of those because I’ve had so many things. So I always put my humic, I don’t have very much in there right now, but I put it in my glass of water in the morning, and I just drink it through the day. Then there’s no problem.

But when I first, actually it was after COVID that I started. I never had detox symptoms until after COVID, but people who are very sensitive can have that, and then they just need to use what we call the slow introduction method, which is easily available when you read the instructions.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah, and so are the minerals that the humic and fulvic bring in, are they just the macrominerals, or are they the microminerals?

Caroline Alan:

The minerals are all of the macrominerals and micronutrients your body needs. And here’s the cool thing, though, they’re naturally in the ratios that your body utilizes. So there’s lots of the macrominerals that your body utilizes a lot of, but there are all of the micronutrients. And in these natural ratios, those balanced ratios that the body needs.

So the thing about minerals is one mineral might have a relationship with up to 10 other minerals, and your body is constantly working, and this cellular system that is your body constantly works to manage and work with that balance. There’s no way you will know, or any even ChatGPT could ever tell you what of any particular mineral your body needs.

So instead, what you do is you bring them in using the plant-based minerals already in their natural ratios, and you just put them in daily, and your system goes, oh, I have exactly what I need. They’re in the right ratios. This is really supporting homeostasis in the whole system.

Lindsey Parsons:

So sometimes I will run tests like Organic Acids tests, Metabolomix, NutrEval, where they do say you’re very magnesium deficient, for example, you should take 600 milligrams a day. So I’m just wondering how this compares? Could you need this plus maybe some extra something else, or should this, in theory, supply all your needs?

Caroline Alan:

Yeah, this is a really interesting question, and particularly for a practitioner like you, it’s a natural thing to think somebody is low in magnesium. We should add magnesium, but the way I want you to think about it is because the gut is more like a forest than it is a car. There’s no tank for magnesium. We can’t just fill it up with 500 or 600 milligrams of magnesium every day. The issue that you’ve got, and I’m not quite sure. I don’t know those particular tests. So first of all, are they intercellular tests?

Lindsey Parsons:

They’re urine tests that look at metabolites of processes in the body that would indicate deficiencies.

Caroline Alan:

So the challenge with something like that is, first of all, they’re transient. So to test minerals, you really need to do an intercellular test, whether it’s hair tissue mineral analysis, which is challenging with women particularly, most women color their hair, so you could use a pubic hair, but you can’t use a hair from your head, and then intercellular there are some but you have to be physically with your patient to do an intercellular test. The one that I recommend is something called Oligoscan. It uses spectrophotometry, which is used in material science, to do an intercellular look.

Because what you don’t know with this test, with the urine test, is what is the real issue? Is there a heavy metal toxicity issue, meaning that the heavy metals are taking up the receptor sites for the magnesium, and that’s why the magnesium is not being absorbed, or is the body actually flushing? So you don’t really know from a transient type of mineral test what is happening intercellularly.

And because minerals have to be utilized, particularly magnesium. I mean, there are some areas where magnesium is used not intercellularly, but mostly intercellularly. You need to know how much magnesium is getting absorbed and assimilated into the cells, so that’s the tissues. So it’s a whole body of knowledge.

And what I think, and you could have a short-term effect for somebody with giving them 600 milligrams of magnesium, but you also have to think again about what kind of imbalance you’re creating in the gut on a regular basis with the homeostasis of that ecosystem by putting in a concentration. Minerals are very powerful substances. They’re very powerful.

So from the research that I’ve done and the study that I’ve done, and what I’ve seen also in people who have an Oligoscan at a show and it shows a deep imbalance with magnesium, they just take our minerals for six months and their imbalance goes away. So this is the difference with minerals. Rather than trying to create a quick change in the mineral level of magnesium over the short term, you have to look at the whole ecosystem. What’s happening in the ecosystem that they’re having a potential magnesium depletion?

Should we look at heavy metals or parasites, or maybe an overgrowth of Candida that is messing with the uptake and absorption? If you’re doing an intracellular test, how are their cell linings doing? Are they struggling with cell lining health, and the magnesium is not getting into the cell?

So you see, this is a whole thing that I’m trying to bring to the world, like a different way of thinking about minerals and what even a mineral depletion actually means.

Lindsey Parsons:

So I have done a hair tissue mineral analysis. I can’t recall but I was deficient in something important. Would that be a good way to track your minerals for six months? Like, how long should I do it before I retest? Six months? Is that a good amount of time?.

Caroline Alan:

So what I always say is six months. And if you had a very deep depletion, I would say eight months to even a year. The idea being, if you think about your body as a natural ecosystem, how do ecosystems like change to occur? They don’t like large, big changes happening in a short period of time. They want slow, incremental changes so that, and I always say it like this, if your body had all the minerals that it needed, when it needed them, where it needed them, how it needed them, on a regular basis, every single day, and it was able to generate that 1200 watts of energy that your body needed, think what could happen. It’s a really exciting idea.

Now it’s certainly possible that you could take the minerals for six months and still show a deep depletion in a particular area, then you absolutely have to look at toxicity, like a heavy metal toxicity, or parasites, because parasites metabolize minerals prior to you getting them, things like that.

Lindsey Parsons:

Okay, you mentioned the Oligoscan, and I always sort of thought of that. It’s kind of woo, woo. So tell me a little bit more about why you think that’s a valid measurement and how it works.

Caroline Alan:

Oh, we’ve done a lot of different testing with Oligoscan and the hair tissue mineral analysis, and they really correspond with the real experts that I know in the mineral world who are chemists, and they agree that it is a solid test. It’s not a medical device in the US, mainly because the company did not want to pay the money, because it costs hundreds of millions of dollars to get your device made into a medical device in the US. It’s a medical device in Europe. So it uses spectrophotometry. And spectrophotometry is a very stable science in the material sciences world. It’s not questioned at all. So what it uses is a light. And have you ever had one? It shines a light.

Lindsey Parsons:

You put your hand on it like this?

Caroline Alan:

No, you hold your hand up, and it actually has a device, and it uses the spectrophotometer, shines in four places on your palm.

Lindsey Parsons:

I don’t think I’ve done it.

Caroline Alan:
And it takes it through an algorithm they’ve been developing. It must be close to 25 years they’ve been working and refining and refining this algorithm, and it delivers back your levels of all your beneficial minerals, your electrolytes, your heavy metal levels, vitamin levels as well. And it’s telling you what is happening intercellularly, so in your tissues. It also gives you some idea about free radical load, as well as sulfur conjugation, which is about how detoxification is happening in your body.

From the research that we’ve done and looked into it, we believe it is an absolute, real, effective device. There are other intercellular mineral tests that you can do, and I can’t think of the names off the top of my head, but there are as well.

Lindsey Parsons:

Well, the one that you typically hear about is the RBC Magnesium. What about urine testing?

Caroline Alan:

The problem with urine testing is that, again, first of all, it’s only telling you what the person ate in the last 72 hours, and it doesn’t tell you anything about absorption and assimilation. It’s not telling you what you need to know. And what you need to know is how much of these minerals are getting into the body, because then once you know that, you can learn a lot more.

It’s an interesting thing to even look at minerals if you know, people do a poop test for micronutrients, and that’s a big one. I’m like, well, it’s not telling you what you need to know, because you need to know what was absorbed into the bloodstream. Yeah, so at least, but even in the bloodstream, just because it’s in the bloodstream, doesn’t mean it’s in the cells yet. So really intracellularly is what you need.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah. Okay, so I know there’s some obvious signs of mineral depletion, like low blood pressure or muscle cramps or twitches, but are there others people might be looking for?

Caroline Alan:

Absolutely! So the way I like to describe this is, everyone’s different. And if your body can’t generate 1200 watts, it only can generate five or 800 watts a day, what happens to your system? Your weakest areas get hit. So if you have a struggle with your heart, or you have a struggle with muscle stuff, they’ll go there. If you have brain fog, it is a huge, huge sign of mineral depletion. ADHD is a huge sign of mineral depletion. Mouth and teeth problems, huge signs. But what the thing is depends on the person, because one person might have sleep issues and one person might have ADHD, and one person might have anxiety, and one person might have brain fog, and another person might have gut problems.

So the interesting thing about minerals is that when you provide that full spectrum of minerals on a regular basis to a system, here’s what happens. Imagine a cell that doesn’t have what it needs. It sends an electrical, neurological message to your nervous system, saying, I don’t have what I need, I don’t have what I need, I don’t have what I need, I don’t have what I need. Go looking. Go looking. You find yourself opening the fridge at night, looking for something after you just ate dinner, because your cells are literally hangry. They actually call micronutrient deficiency the hidden hunger, because that’s this feeling like there’s just something missing.

So when you think about energy production in your body, why would you get brain fog? Because in a single neuron in your brain, you have up to 2 million mitochondria. So the amount of minerals that your brain uses on a regular basis, moment to moment, is huge. So there are many symptoms that people experience, anxiety as an example. You know, I used to have a lot of anxiety, and I struggled to sleep at night because my nervous system was on high alert all the time. Once I got mineral replenished, I was able to calm and actually be present and get my thoughts together and focus. It really changed everything. It’s like when the tide comes in and all the boats go off the sand at the same time, not really fast, but slowly.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah. So are there any contraindications for taking humic and fulvic minerals, for example, like somebody who might have sulfur processing issues or hydrogen sulfide SIBO, who react to supplements with sulfur?

Caroline Alan:

So first of all, there is some sulfur in our products. It’s a very, very small parts per million amount. We have not had people have strong responses related to that specific issue. But with our Micro-Boost product, we always recommend that people start slowly. So that means like a quarter teaspoon. If you have any of these kinds of issues, you would start slowly with a quarter teaspoon of Micro-Boost in a glass of water you drink that. You do that for three or four days. If you have no discomforts, nothing showing up, then you continue. You add another quarter teaspoon, and you slowly titrate up over time.

So one of the things I have been schooling people in is when you start to think about your body as an ecosystem, rather than a car that needs some windshield washer fluid, you start going, okay, maybe every supplement that I’m going to take, instead of just starting with the dose that’s recommended, I’m going to start slowly, and I’m going to introduce it to my ecosystem in the way that ecosystems like to operate, in a small way, incrementally over time, and really checking in and developing a relationship with our ecosystem, rather than trying to affect it. It’s a different way of thinking.

There is one thing that I will say is if people have hemochromatosis, which is a buildup of iron in the system, taking our products can exacerbate that. However, we have found that using bentonite clay, a particular bentonite clay product from a company called Curcumin Pro* that we think is the best, because it’s a very specific type of bentonite clay, it’s very effective. And you take them together and it creates, it totally balances it out.

Lindsey Parsons:

Okay, so the Micro-Boost has some iron in it is essentially what you’re saying. I have some genetics for hemochromatosis.

Caroline Alan:

So you do need to just watch that. And again, the bentonite clay, really, it’s known to balance it.

Lindsey Parsons:

And this is a powder, or is this a pill?

Caroline Alan:

You can get it in either form, powder or pill.

Lindsey Parsons:

Is there a dosage of that bentonite clay?

Caroline Alan:

I think it’s just like one capsule a day that you’ll see. Yeah, that particular product is the one that I’m most aware of. Yeah.

Lindsey Parsons:

Okay, so can you tell everybody about the different products and then where to find them? And I know I have an affiliate link that people can access in the show notes.

Caroline Alan:

Yeah, yeah, that link should give you a 20% off if you want to try them (use code PERFECTSTOOL for 20% off). So first of all, you can find us at beamminerals.com, I also do want to mention that I have a book coming out in the spring. It’s called the Mineral Reset. It’s being published by Hay House. I’m very excited about that. And if anybody is interested in learning more, they could go to mineralresetbook.com so that’s a great way, if you want to start learning more and getting information sent to you. The two products that I recommend for anyone getting started with bean minerals are these two. It’s called Electrolyze and Micro-Boost. And we call them our advanced set, because the two products together provide all of the uptake, the enhanced uptake of nutrients into the cells via the fulvic, that’s the Electrolyze, and then all of the detoxification, full system detoxification of the humic, which is the Micro-Boost product. They’re really easy to start taking. They taste like water.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah, I’ll vouch for that. You put them in a glass of water, you can’t tell they’re there. The one makes it look like Coke, which is weird when people see me drinking it, especially if I am doing a podcast. I’m just like, this isn’t Coke.

Caroline Alan:

I just pretend. It’s a really great tool. Both of those together, we call them the advanced set, because using them together provides that full spectrum of minerals, plus all of the intercellular and full system detox. It’s a great way to support replenishment, as well as they are going to support uptake of all the other supplementation and nutrition that you’re putting into your mouth.

Lindsey Parsons:

And I also got it, you sent me a set of stuff with, like some sprays. I thought that was interesting, can you really absorb things like that?

Caroline Alan:

Oh, yeah. So this is the coolest product. This is truly a revolutionary product. It’s called Insta lights, and it’s a spray and it’s fulvic so remember how small the fulvic molecule is relative to a cell? If your fist is a cell and the head of a pin is the fulvic molecule, it’s so small that you can spray it right onto your skin, and it will absorb right through your skin into your muscles and tissues within like five seconds, three to five seconds.

So if you are a person who has night cramps, first of all, if you’re a person who has cramping at night, you are mineral deficient, and you need to be taking these minerals internally, which will remove your cramping over a period of time. But with the acute symptom, you just spray this onto your leg. When you have that cramp, it will release your cramp in 30 to 45 seconds, because it’s not just a magnesium spray. Your cramp might not have anything to do with magnesium, phosphorus depletion. There’s other things that can contribute to night cramping. This provides all the minerals directly to the place that you need them, and it absorbs within three to five seconds, and it starts working so that you release your cramp.

It’s incredible. For menstrual cramps, you just spray it on. If you have pain during your first few days of menstruation. It’s great for tension headaches. You wake up with a crick in your neck, you just spray it on. I use it in my eyes. I literally just blink and let it go into my eyes, because in a single cell in your eye, you could have I think it’s 20,000 mitochondria in a single cell. So your eyes are also huge processing tools.

Lindsey Parsons:

I think there was also another bottle that I got that said, like, Happy-Lytes. And whenever my husband’s getting cranky, I’m just like, close your eyes. I’m going to spray your face with this. I didn’t realize it could go in the eyes too.

Caroline Alan:

I’m telling you, Happy-Lytes is our third favorite product out of all of our products. So if you’re a person that deals with anxiety, depression, panic attacks, this is an amazing tool. So it has an essential oil called Bergamot. The interesting thing about Bergamot is your olfactory system, your sniffer is connected to your lower brainstem, which is where the trigger is for the release of endorphins in your body. So you literally just spray and breathe it in and within five, seven seconds, you literally, it shifts the whole neurotransmitter wash in your body. And people literally who struggle with anxiety, depression, panic or hormonal shifts that make them little edgy, incredible support. Teenage girls love this tool.

Lindsey Parsons:

So you know, a lot of the people I work with, and I’m sure a lot of the people listening are already taking calcium, especially if they have any osteopenia, osteoporosis, everyone’s on magnesium, multivitamins, of course, that includes minerals. Some are on multiminerals. If they’re starting your stuff, do you think they should just drop all that other stuff or do it gradually? I mean, what would be the way to change the regime?

Caroline Alan:

Well, first of all, I always want to say that I am not a practitioner, and you always want to check with yours. If you’re working with a practitioner, you need to check with and work with your practitioner, help them to understand the minerals. Have them contact us. We’d love to talk with them to help them understand this.

I am not a proponent of taking single minerals in any form, whether it’s calcium or magnesium or potassium or chromium or zinc or any of those. And it’s not necessarily because they’re creating lots, some of them create more problems than others, but it’s because they’re not maintaining balance in the body, and their bioavailability is extremely low.

So even though these are trace minerals, meaning they have small amounts relative to that pill you take that’s got milligrams of magnesium, it’s nearly 100% bioavailable. That’s the cool thing about fulvic. When you drink, your fulvic starts absorbing through your mouth, your esophagus, your throat. By the time it hits your stomach, it’s already started to be absorbed and utilized by the body. That’s phenomenal.

When we work with athletes and they use it for the first time, they’re like, what just happened? Because they feel it immediately, because they’re in deep depletion when they’re in an event. So with your ecosystem, you never want to make drastic changes quickly. So you’re going to start with the minerals, and you’re going to slowly say, okay, what happens if I stop taking one of your other tools. Let’s say you’re not going to need it over time, because these are going to provide all that you need. Again, if you’re a performance athlete, you should contact us, and we’d be happy to tell you how you can use it for performance athletics, for recovery or increasing your performance. So yes, slow changes over time, and on the back of the bottle, we have a little QR code. It explains this all very, very well.

Lindsey Parsons:

Okay, great, yeah. Any final thoughts before we go?

Caroline Alan:

Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me, and I’m so excited for the people who listen to this podcast and are interested in gut health, because I’m telling you, there’s really nothing better that you can put into your gut microbiome than humic and fulvic to support homeostasis balance and a thriving environment. So thank you so much for having me.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah, thanks for being here. This is great information.

Caroline Alan:

Awesome.

March 24, 2026March 24, 2026

Gut Health, Libido and Cortisol: The Overlooked Triangle with Dr. Diane Mueller

Adapted from episode 164 of The Perfect Stool podcast and edited for readability with Dr. Diane Mueller, ND, DAOM, a board certified sexologist and the owner of My Libido Doc and Lindsey Parsons, EdD.

Lindsey Parsons:

It’s my pleasure to have you back. So I had you on episode 43 in March of 2021 talking about Lyme disease and mold illness. So I’m curious how you made the transition to talking about sexual wellness and libido?

Dr. Mueller:

Yeah, it’s a great question, and I would say I haven’t completely made the transition. It’s more like I have my foot in both arenas now. If people go back and listen to that episode, they’ll hear my story of Lyme and mold, right? And so I went through crazy illness with Lyme and mold, and that was a large part of what led me into pursuing that as a niche in my clinical career. And if we go back even further than that original story, we get to a story from about 2001 and probably even a couple years earlier than that, 2019. I was in college, and I had this very, very strange vulvar pain. And so this was before I was in medicine. This was before I really even knew anything about holistic health, and I did not know what to do with this pain. So I went to the university doctor and they ran tests and everything was normal, just like the same thing that we’ve talked about a million times on your podcast before, and I was left with this pain. The medical community doesn’t know what it is. It’s keeping me up at night, and it’s really disturbing. And so I was talking to my roommate, a very dear friend of mine at the time about it, and she handed me a book that was extremely shocking to me at that point in time, which was the book called “Sex for One” by Betty Dodson. And it’s all about self pleasure and masturbation. And it was very shocking to me, because I grew up extremely Catholic. There was a lot of shame I had around sex and my sexuality, and so when I got this book, I honestly didn’t even know what to do with it, but I was desperate one night, so I started reading it, and it was very interesting.

These stories that Betty talked about in this book, and some of them talked about women who had experienced severe pain that had gone away through self pleasure. So one very desperate evening, I tried it, and the pain went away. This is kind of cool. And I tried it again the next day, because the pain came back. Pain went away again. And that went on for about a week, and then the pain was just completely gone. So that was really the first intro into just being curious about sex and about libido, about the wellness side of things. And it really led me to a quote, that I say numerous times throughout my book, which is pleasure is not just about desire, but something we require. And so really, for the past two and a half decades, it’s just been something that is like a side reading hobby, reading about relationships, reading about sex, reading about tantra, reading about different relationship styles. And it wasn’t until several years ago when I got divorced and was really going through just the trauma of divorce, that I asked different questions. And some of the questions I started asking were like, well, what really causes people, from a standpoint of relationships, to stay separate or get divorced or break up or whatever?

And one of the things I found is in survey after survey after survey, intimacy, or lack of intimacy, came up as one of the top five reasons. And so, fast forward then even to 2023 when Harvard put out a study on longevity and on wellness. And what Harvard found in their study was, and this was a longitudinal study over, I think it was like 75 years, a very, very long study where they looked at diet, lifestyle. They lab tested for a ton of different biomarkers. They looked at sleep. They looked at all these things that we talk about in holistic wellness. And one of the things they found, the number one thing they found that was the peak, the number one reason for people living a healthy life was the quality of their relationships.

So, I had already made the decision before that study came out that I wanted to start talking out about sex and sexual wellness. And then, knowing that study came out, that really further propelled me to wanting to do this. So, I still do have my Lyme practice and my mold practice, and I still love that and care for those people very, very dearly and still am very much involved in that world. But I do also have a foot in this other world, in part because I am, like you, very, very interested in holistic wellness. And I feel like this side of relationships and sexual intimacy is one of these things that is still sadly so taboo, even though we’re seeing these surveys and these research saying that, actually, this is one of the most important things. And for whatever reason, Lindsey, I seem to have a knack for wanting to talk about the things; Lyme and mold are also kind of like this that are a little on the edge that people don’t want to always talk about in the public eye. So it really was just a perfect fit for another pot to play in, so to speak.

Lindsey Parsons:

So that’s interesting. Your story, when you look back now with the knowledge you have, how do you make sense of what changed for the pain? Was it the orgasms? Was it the blood flow? Or was it a mental thing?

Dr. Mueller:

I think it’s a little bit of all. And I appreciate the question, because yes, obviously I’ve gone back and reflected upon this. I think, as anybody in the profession would, my best guess as to what was happening is, I think it was a level of interstitial cystitis, which, in wellness, we sometimes call leaky gut of the bladder, where that bladder wall is a little bit inflamed and that pain can radiate. And we see, oftentimes, there’s a pain with that. There’s a neurological dysfunction where the brain is, or the bladder is, sending the signal to the brain through its being irritated, and that sort of thing that it is needing to urinate even though it doesn’t. And there can be this radiating kind of pain and these radiating sensations from it. So that’s what I’ve been best able to hypothesize is what was going on. And we do see that orgasms that change the neurological reprogramming, which orgasms can do, can actually reset neural pathways. So I believe that’s my best hypothesis at this point. And I’m always changing hypotheses as I learn more information, but at this point, that’s what I think was going on back then.

Lindsey Parsons:

Okay, interesting. So tell us about how sexual health and gut health interact?

Dr. Mueller:

Yeah, there’s a couple things that I think are so important. And when we talk about, and I know you talk so much about the microbiome on your show, and it’s important for everybody to understand we have a genital microbiome as well. So men have a microbiome on their penis. Women have a microbiome of their vagina. And we don’t know quite as much, unfortunately, in science, what’s going on with the male genital microbiome, but for women, we do know that the microbiome of the vagina is a huge part of what is keeping it healthy, what is keeping it from infection, and also what is helping sex to feel good, for the lubrication to happen, those sorts of things.

We also know that the gut is a reservoir for the vaginal microbiome, so the Lactobacilli species that we see so prevalent in the vagina actually are stored in the gastrointestinal tract. So we see that when people have common abnormalities of the GI tract, anything from our SIBO to our imbalances and our good bacteria are the ones that overgrow a little bit too much and all of our commensals. Or when people have infections, parasites, those sort of things that we can get a change in those species, especially those Lactobacilli, because those are the really important species of the vagina, and therefore a change in the vaginal microbiome. And all of a sudden, somebody might experience more infections. They might experience pH issues, they might experience odor issues, they might experience things that just don’t feel as good from an insertion perspective. And so we can see all of that.

And when things aren’t functioning very well down there, we tend to not have as much desire for anybody to go there, or ourselves. So that is one thing. And then I know you’ve talked about this on your show before, but I think because of the context, it’s good to at least drop this again for people to hear that we do know that part of the proper recycling and re-utilization of hormones such as estrogen requires a proper gut hormone balance. And when those gut hormones are out of balance, we can run into situations where we are not recycling estrogen as properly, sometimes we can lead to too much estrogen in that scenario, and it can throw off our hormones, and therefore throw off our libido and sex drive due to that as well.

Lindsey Parsons:

Let’s talk a little bit more about that, the estrogen dominance-beta glucuronidase connection.

Dr. Mueller:

So we know that beta glucuronidase is that enzyme. Anytime we see that -ase, we know that’s an enzyme, and we know that in certain situations, gastrointestinal infections, SIBO, these scenarios, we can see an increase in that enzyme. And so what’s supposed to happen with estrogen is that it is detoxed through the liver through our Phase one and Phase two pathways, and when it’s detoxed, we are essentially getting rid of any sort of recycled components. And what this beta glucuronidase enzyme does is once these recycled components are broken down in the liver, they make their way into the gut, and we are excreting them. But if people have too much of this enzyme, which we see in certain gastrointestinal infections, and they have too much of this enzyme, then we can actually see those estrogen components that are recycled. They actually will start to reform back together into whole estrogen and then be reabsorbed. And so the body was trying to get rid of them for balance, and now we reabsorb them. So now we have a higher amount of estrogen, and that’s when we get into that estrogen dominant scenario.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah, I know that I had estrogen dominance my whole life, and I still do, even now, when I’m having to supplement with estrogen with patches now that I’m in menopause. But the funny thing is, I still don’t have ideal estrogen metabolism. But anyway, what are the symptoms of estrogen dominance?

Dr. Mueller:

You know, that’s really interesting, right? It can be anything from bloating to acne to irritability to mood swings to changes in sleep. I feel like these hormones when we look at them, it’s almost similar to when we talk about the gut. A lot of people will say the gut is the root of all illness. And we say that because there’s so many different symptoms that can come from gut imbalances and hormone imbalances; I really feel they are very similar. We can have symptoms of headaches or migraines, right? There’s so many different things that can come from these imbalances. It’s very, very, very widespread. Which is why I think it’s important, when we’re looking at things, to say we need to test for sure, because a lot of the things that are going to be an estrogen imbalance, can also be symptoms of many other scenarios.

And I think the point that you brought up too around like, oh, you’re in menopause, you’re taking supplemental estrogen, HRT, and then you’re noticing that you’re still in estrogen dominance, is a really important point to make. Because I think a lot of people, when they are on hormones, and I’m in perimenopause, I’m using estrogen patches, they are saving my life. I love, love, love, love estrogen patches. Really, it’s like making all the difference with sleep and mood and so many things. And for me, when I look at hormones, and I’m regularly running my Dutch test and there’s other tests similar to that on the market, of course, just our urinary hormone test. And for me, what’s super interesting is when I break down estrogen, I have a real, and I’ve known this for years, I have a real high tendency to break down estrogen into the 4-OH or the 16-OH pathways. And, for your listeners, those are the pathways that tend to be more problematic if you make too many of these recycled components of estrogen, like the 4-OHs. If you’re making too much of it, it can damage your DNA, for example.

So we want to be very, very careful that when we are taking hormones, that, yes, we’re looking at markers. And a lot of times, people are only measuring and monitoring their progress with these symptoms and by serum markers. And serum markers, honestly, are a great way, in general, when you’re on HRT, to monitor the levels of HRT, but you’re going to miss these breakdown, recycled components of estrogen. So for some people it’s not even an estrogen dominant thing, where it’s like, you have good amount of estrogen, you have good amount of progesterone, but it’s a problem where you’re not metabolizing the estrogen quickly enough and well enough where it could even present, even like an estrogen dominant scenario in the body, even though that’s not what we would classically label it as.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah. In fact, I was mislabeling so I have the exact same problem, although for me, it’s just the 4-OH pathway. I just did the Vibrant Hormone Zoomer. I’m waiting to take the results to my naturopath to get an official recommendation, but in the meantime, I started taking DIM* and Calcium D-Glucarate* and extra NAC*. What do you do for your excess 4-OH and 16-OH pathways?

Dr. Mueller:

Yeah, yeah. DIM is definitely huge. You know, Calcium D-Glucurate’s going to help a little bit more with that phase two process. So, just for the listeners too, it’s like estrogen, just like anything else in the body. We have our Phase One part of our liver breakdown, which is kind of doing that first part of detox, and then we have that phase two. So that works for hormones as well as all of our toxins, chemicals, etc. So DIM tends to work more on that phase one. So that’s when we’re saying, hey, we want more of this estrogen to turn into the healthy 2-OH version and away from the 4-OH or 16-OH versions. And then phase two is where we further break down estrogen and when we get into the processes known as glucuronidation, methylation, and that’s a little bit more where that Calcium D-Glucarate tends to come in. So DIM is super interesting, because DIM is absolutely what I have found in studies to be the best. Indole-3-Carbinol*, I3C will also work pretty well.

Lindsey Parsons:

…which is literally the worst tasting supplement I’ve ever taken. It’s so bad, it’s like eating moth balls.

Dr. Mueller:

It’s really bad. It’s true. It’s true. The only thing that I think is worse than that are some of the really bitter herbs that we have in Chinese medicine, some of those can be, yeah, really pretty nasty. But, yeah, you’re absolutely right on.

Lindsey Parsons:

If DIM does the same thing, I’ll stick with the DIM.

Dr. Mueller:

Totally, and that’s what I use. And so, the tricky thing about DIM is that DIM will both lower estrogen and it will help estrogen go down the 2-OH, the better pathway. But as far as actually converting and getting the estrogens to go down that better pathway. There’s just really nothing that compares to DIM, so it is what I’m using at this point, both for myself and for patients, and the results are just phenomenal. I am moving, honestly, like mine is moving slower than I see a lot of patients move, and I think that’s probably just due to genetics from that estrogen detox pathway, but it’s still moving. I still think that it was really bad. I had 76% of the 4-OH and 16 OH. I only had 24% of that 2-OH, and we want between 60 and 80% of that 2-OH. So I saw, in about a three month period, the last time I saw it drop by 17%, which was great. So my point is it’s moving slower, because I do see other people move even faster than that, but it’s still moving.

The other point to make here is that 16-OH is actually useful for people to have. You do want small amounts of it. It is proliferative, meaning it does call cells to multiply. So there is some sort of link with cancer on that one. However, it also causes bone cells to multiply. So we also do want enough 16-OH to make sure that we are stimulating our bone cells to grow, which we all know is so important with menopause. And that’s another reason for people to consider, especially if you are using HRT, but even if you’re not to run these urinary hormone panels, because you do want to make sure, not only are you majority detoxing through the Healthy estrogen pathway, that you’re also making a little bit of that 16-OH because you do need it to really stimulate that bone growth.

Lindsey Parsons:

I assumed, because, well, first I have, a grandmother who died of either ovarian or uterine cancer. My sister’s had uterine cancer, my cousin had testicular cancer, so I know the cancer is in the family. So I knew I needed to be careful when I started HRT. But also I had all the symptoms. I had all the hot flashes and all the night sweats and the poor sleep, so all of that told me probably you need to look in deeper. Is that an accurate assessment that, if you’re having all the symptoms, you’re probably somebody who’s not processing hormones in the best way?

Dr. Mueller:

I mean it could be that you’re not processing in the best way. It also could be that you just don’t have the right amount of hormones in you, right? So sometimes it’s the one, sometimes it’s the other and really, as far as dosing on hormones, for people that are on HRT in general, the way to start it is, typically, most doctors will start people on more of the lower dosing side of things and see how people respond. And from that standpoint, yes, it’s good to look at labs to make sure you’re not off the charts, high in crazy amounts when you take these things. But you also want to make sure that you are looking at and really paying attention to symptoms. So your symptoms, when you are properly hormonally balanced, you will see a lot of these symptoms go away. So it’s really the combination of both the symptoms and the labs that you want to consider here.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah, yeah, no, I had to go down. It took a while to get to what I needed, and really persisting and looking for new experts and stuff to recommend, but I have to take 300 milligrams of progesterone a night, plus I’ve got some testosterone, along with moving up my estrogen dose, but the higher dose, without the progesterone, was causing bleeding. So it was like trying to figure it all out and going through a whole basically DNC because of the bleeding before, we figured out it was the hormones, which I can’t believe we didn’t start with instead of sending me through this horrible surgery. But anyway..

Dr. Mueller:

Yeah, yeah, sadly it happens. And I think it’s like an important reason to talk about this, because I think oftentimes too not only do women not know, but even if they do, there’s still so much fear around the cancer thing, even though there’s so much of hormones causing cancer that really has been demystified. And when we look a lot at the Women’s Health Initiative research that came out a couple decades ago ago, and we really look at that with that research was saying, and that was the main study, and there was a few of them, that was the main study that a lot of the cancer warnings were based off of. But when we’re actually looking at the stats, and when you read the study, you realize that the way the media portrayed this, the way the CDC and the doctors picked this up, was a big misrepresentation of what was in that study.

In fact, what was really interesting in that study that is so opposite of what we oftentimes, even say in medicine, is that when estrogen was given without progesterone, so many times, it’s thought in medicine that, estrogen is proliferative, and you give progesterone to protect against that, and there is, like, some level of reason for that, right? We see, for example, when people have things like endometriosis and they have all these cells growing outside of the uterus, that balancing that estrogen/progesterone ratio and adding progesterone in tends to really help. But what that study found was that when women were just on estrogen alone, cancer risk actually went down, and that wasn’t even told, it was the combination of estrogen and progesterone that saw an increase in cancer risk. But the way the study was analyzed, they made it sound like it was a 20% increase. But if you actually really look, go back and look at the data, it was only one in 1000 increase, and the people that did have cancer in that one in 1000 you know, we don’t even know for sure if that was caused by that right? So it’s like so small of a risk when you’re looking at the numbers. But they also had better survival rates. They also had better long-term health as far as cardiovascular and brain health. So, it’s like when these studies are just taken out context like this, and we’re isolating this one random value and not explaining to the public the entirety of the study, people get scared, and I think they make a lot of really bad decisions just based upon not understanding and being fed bad data.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah.And then it was that Premarin made from horse urine, right?

Dr. Mueller:

Correct

Lindsey Parsons:

Not bioidentical progesterone they were taking.

Dr. Mueller:

Exactly.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah, there’s an entire generation who, that includes my mother, people who were taking hormone replacement therapy. They stopped, and they never went back, and now they’re kind of too old to do it

Dr. Mueller:

Exactly. And that’s definitely another thing. I’m glad you bring that up, because it is another important thing that we really realize. The best health benefits are absolutely if you start this within the first 10 years of menopause, and menopause being that single day in time when it’s one year past your last period and and even earlier starting, the better. So I’m in that weird perimenopause stage of, am I having a period this month or next month? Or when it was like, I’m in that weird stage, but I’ve started now. I’ve been on HRT for, I guess, about eight months or so now, and I’m starting now, not only because of the symptoms, but also because we see that the sooner you start, when you get to this age, and really balance that, the better you are cardio protected, the better you are cognitively protected, the better you are bone protected. So we really do want to maximize this and get the best benefits. And you’re absolutely right. Those poor women that were fed this real inaccurate information now it’s like, largely too late for them. You know there might still be some benefit. I’m not saying not to do it, but from that bulk of that huge benefit, we really know that earlier starts make a huge difference.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah, and I mean, the other piece, of course, is that it’s hard to find doctors who are experts in this. So if you’re just starting into perimenopause, just starting to have symptoms, get that appointment now, because it may take you one or two providers, three providers, before you find the right one who gets it right and fixes this for you and knows enough and all that. So, it’s a project for everybody heading into menopause.

Dr. Mueller:

I agree, start early and I’ll tell everybody real fast about my book, Want to Want It, get this book too, because it’ll help you. The biggest thing with this is self advocacy. And so in my book, one of the things I talk about is, these are the tests you really need to run. And I break it down very simply as to why, so you can actually interview doctors and say, are you going to be able to run these appropriate tests that I really need to have run so that you can get the information? Because a lot of times doctors are not. And we know other things, like we know that usually with menopause, it’s another time that we see the thyroid hormone and the thyroid system also start to falter. Oftentimes, it can happen at menopause. So, making sure you’re getting proper thyroid testing, and the thoroughness of that and all of that we cover in the book, so you can self advocate.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah, I love that title, “Want to Want It”, because I think a lot of times when women hit points of low libido, and if they are in a relationship or not, but sometimes the partner just kind of goes along with it and it just sort of fades away. But, I mean, it is like the beginning of the death of a marriage.

Dr. Mueller:

It is!

Lindsey Parsons:

You want to want to want it. That’s an important part of a relationship. And so that leads into my next question, which is, how does having a healthy sex life help with hormonal balance and general health?

Dr. Mueller:

Yeah, it’s these very vicious cycles we get into, I think, in health, one of the biggest things are these vicious cycles of the chicken and the egg, right? So we see that in order to have a healthy libido from a physical side of things, we need good circulation. We need the thyroid balance. We don’t need too much stress. We need our hormone balance. We don’t need too much neurological inflammation, so we don’t have many toxins in our body. We need proper gut health, as we talked about. So all of these things and more will play into that healthy libido. And then you also get into like, are you sexually bored in bed? Do you trust your partner? Do you have an element of safety? Can you communicate? Can you talk about your sex life? Because we do actually see surveys that showed 92% of people that say they’re satisfied with their sex life talk about it. So we know we need to talk about it if it’s going to be good. So all of these things can play into why a libido is low. Now what’s interesting is, stress, for example, is one of the big ones for people, and this is the overwhelm of midlife, right? Where it’s like this midlife is oftentimes the time where it’s like things start to go haywire. Here, people are together with their partner, oftentimes, for years, they are in their career, they have kids.

Oftentimes, they’re balancing so many things. And, sex is that thing that’s like, maybe at nine o’clock at night. It’s like it comes through the passing thought of, should we do this? No, I’m so tired I’ve got to get up at 4:30 a.m. the next day and start it all over again. And so what’s interesting in answering your question here is that we see that orgasm is one of the best ways, and oxytocin that is secreted with orgasm, is one of the best ways of actually lowering stress hormones. So I really believe that God, Spirit, universe, whatever we want to call, anybody wants to call this energy, gave us as humans the power of orgasm, in part, as a way of actually regulating ourselves and our stress. So, you get an orgasm and all of a sudden your cortisol goes way down. It really helps to rebalance that. And so what’s interesting about this is, sometimes, when I’m talking about this, people will be like, well, you know, I’ve read online about a 20-second hug or a 6-second kiss, and we can do these things to raise oxytocin. And those are great, like petting an animal raises oxytocin. There’s all these ways. But to give an example, like this 20-second hug will raise oxytocin in the blood, maybe like 20, 30, 40, 50% is what we see. Sounds pretty good, well, until you realize that an orgasm is going to raise it 200 to 500%, so what we actually get from our body rebalancing with oxytocin is so much better with an orgasm. And one of the movements in the natural health space is compounded intranasal oxytocin, where you actually use that to get a compounded agency to prescribe oxytocin. It’s prescribed and given intranasally. That works really well from an absorption standpoint. That’s why it’s prescribed that way.

But I’m telling you, I have never seen anybody take that, I’ve used it, it’s great. I’ve worked with other people who’ve used it, and you can feel a little bit of a shift, for sure, from a standpoint of, like, oh, there’s like, a little shift in calmness. And I think it’s a great tool. Compared to what I’ve seen in myself, as well as women that I talk to that are having profound orgasms and really helping them with stress and resiliency, it’s just not even close as to what I think can come from those orgasms. So that’s a little bit of that chicken and the egg around then, okay, so I’m too stressed to have sex, but I’m not having sex, so then I’m not using my fundamental, own, innate, non-prescribed, just made for my own body, chemical way of actually balancing that stress and helping me regulate.

Lindsey Parsons:

Indeed. So what are some of the most common gut health issues that are impacting people’s sex lives?

Dr. Mueller:

I think a lot of what we mentioned, right? So anything that’s going to really bother the microbiome, anything that’s going to bother that beta glucuronidase and increase that enzyme production. So anything that we’re looking at as far as our SIBO, our parasites, our H pylori, you know, our infections, GI wise. But I also think another big thing that we also want to mention are proton pump inhibitors, right? Anything that is changing the stomach acid of our body, because not only are we more subject to infections that way, but we’re also not going to absorb a lot of nutrients. So we know, for example, that we need iron, manganese, zinc, copper, right? These are some of our top nutrients that we need in order to make things like sex hormones. We do need some B vitamins in there as well. And so if we’re having any stomach issues that are leading to anything around proper absorption or in absorption of nutrients, that’s going to actually impact our hormonal levels.

We know that too low fat diets, people that are on too low fat diets, or even on things like statins, there’s a concern, because cholesterol turns into the nutrient DHEA, and DHEA is what we make estrogen and testosterone out of so, potentially, if we’re eating these really low fat diets, or if we’re seeing our cholesterol numbers be really low, I see sometimes people that are on these cholesterol lowering statin medications, and their cholesterol comes in at 120, 130, 140, these are, way too low of numbers. Not only is cholesterol good for us from a standpoint of cell health and brain health, but it’s also important from a standpoint of hormone health. So if we’re doing this work, you’re keeping our diet too low, and we’re not working with those proper nutrient balances. Or if we have things like leaky gut, maybe we’re eating too much gluten, maybe we are eating things that we have food allergies or food sensitivities to. Maybe we are eating non-organic food in high quantities, and that’s disrupting the microbiome. Maybe there’s heavy metals in our gut and throughout our body, which have also been shown to cause leaky gut.

With any of those things, and we have a huge tendency in that arena, to not have the nutrient absorptions we need, and not being able to make those hormones in the way that we need and keep our body balanced throughout. We also know that certain nutrients, a lot of our greens, a lot of how the things we have to chew can help to generate things like nitric oxide in the body. Nitric oxide is an essential vasodilator, so it’s an essential thing to dilate those blood vessels, to get that circulation to the penis and also to the vagina. A lot of people don’t realize, it’s like we have our little blue pills for the penis, which can work very well acutely. They don’t really fix any root cause issues. But a lot of people do not realize that as women, we also need circulation to the vagina and to the vulva, to all of our erogenous tissue, and that sometimes things like vaginal dryness is actually not a hormonal problem. It certainly can be, but it’s from a circulation problem. So we really want to get that blood flow not only to the penis, but to the vaginal tissue as well, and it’s equally as important for women.

Lindsey Parsons:

And a clue that you might have that problem would be, probably, that you had high blood pressure?

Dr. Mueller:

That’s definitely a big one, right? Because it’s like when I talk to cardiologists about erectile dysfunction, for example, it’s a very common thing that cardiologists will say that the first time a man actually gets diagnosed with something like a heart problem or a blood vessel problem is when they have erectile dysfunction. That oftentimes is annoying enough and it’s causing a man enough stress to say, okay, I’m ready to get this checked out. And of course, as we know, these things that affect one part of the body often affect the whole thing. And if it’s a circulatory problem, it’s not like it’s like only blood flow to the penis. It’s going to be blood flow everywhere else, right? So blood pressure is an important one, Apolipoprotein B on a serum panel, so that cholesterol marker. Oftentimes people are just looking at total cholesterol, your good and bad cholesterol, the ratio of those sorts of things. But the Apolipoprotein B, or Apo B for short, is a better marker that you can get, pretty cheaply, added on if you can get your doctor to run it. That is a blood marker that will talk about, it’s a cholesterol marker. But what we’ve seen in studies is it’s very correlated to plaque on the arteries. And if you have plaque on the arteries, there’s probably an element of that hardening, or just restriction of blood flow from that side of things. So you know definitely blood pressure is good, but I would also really advocate, at a minimum, to also get that Apolipoprotein B, because it will tell a lot about that arterial health as well.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah, at risk of being slightly off topic, I did do that test, and my Apo B was elevated, and I kind of have just blown it off because my sister has had high cholesterol for years, and she got a calcium artery scan and it was zero, and I thought it’s probably going to be the same thing for me, because I exercise, I eat well, like I do all the things, why should I have plaques in my arteries? But am I being naive?

Dr. Mueller:

I personally like doing either the CAC score, like you’re talking about, or something like a CIMT, which is an ultrasound of the carotid artery. Those types of tests are great, and I do think it’s worth it, they’re going to be more accurate for sure than the Apo B, but I do think they do correlate really highly. So if I was in your position, I would still do my due diligence and just go and get one of those basic things done, just to be safe, because it is your heart. Note for listeners, it’s so interesting, right? Like, some of the things that are most used commonly for lowering Apo B are things like red yeast rice, CoQ10*, those kinds of things. Red yeast rice is the natural version of a statin.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah, I’ve got some in my closet that for some reason I just can’t bring myself to take. I don’t know why.

Dr. Mueller:

Yeah, well, and it’s interesting, it works in the same mechanism of a statin. So it’s what’s known as an HMG CoA reductase inhibitor, which just means you don’t make as much cholesterol. And just like a statin, red yeast rice can lower the CoQ10 in your body. So it’s better that it’s natural, but it still has some mechanism that can be a level of concern. But what I wanted to share with you is plant sterols*. I’ve actually seen more clinical results that I’ve been happy with, especially in people with familial hypercholesterolemia, where there is that genetic high cholesterol. I don’t see people that have that genetic tendency respond with red yeast rice near the level as they do with plant sterols. And not saying I don’t still use red yeast rice, I do. But really, the plant sterols for that group of people have just blown me away more than red yeast rice.

Lindsey Parsons:

I’ll have to look into that. So back to the topic at hand, yes, the most obvious intersections of gut health and sex would relate to anal sex. So I’m curious first, whether anal sex causes gut health issues like hemorrhoids or anal fissures or other issues, or if there’s a healthy way to do it for avoiding those problems?

Dr. Mueller:

So if we already have a level of vascular fragility, especially intra anally, it’s probably not going to help the scenario. The biggest thing is, many people have anal sex without any source of problems, as far as causing any sort of hemorrhoids or fissures or those kinds of things. There’s a few things, though, like wanting to use a ton of lube, is like the most obvious one. So your silicon-based lubes, or your oil-based lubes are going to work the best. Your water-based lubes are very . . . I love water-based lubes for certain things, but water-based lubes, they’re just not, as their viscosity is lower, and so they don’t tend to have the level of slipperiness that is needed for anal sex to actually not cause pain. So it’s a lot of things. We want to follow your body, and if your body is saying this hurts, this is a big area where you don’t just suck it up and be like, all right, we’re going to figure this out anyways, because if you’re getting any sort of pain at all, that can be a big sign. Anal sex, if done well, should actually be pleasure and not pain.

A lot of how people start with anal sex is doing something like, there’s a few different things to start. One, it’s always good, from a hygiene perspective, to bathe before, bowels are evacuated before, people will even use anal douches sometimes. These are basically just water inserted into the anus via a bowl that you squeeze up there. You want to use lube for this and make sure it’s clean, but that can help take care of any sort of concern around microbiomes and infections spreading. You clean out the orifice before you actually do that act.

Once people have done that, starting really slowly, like a finger. Sometimes people even use gloves or finger condoms for this. Then you use a little bit of that silicone oil lube, and you really just go around the anal sphincter muscle very, very lightly, just like a light touch, a light pressure. Put a finger there, and a lot of breathing and a lot of slow insertion and a lot of pausing. Oftentimes you’re just doing that with a finger, and you’re getting that anal canal there, you’re getting that rectum and the tissue there, you’re getting that cavity used to the sensation.

Because a lot of what can happen for people is if this is done too quickly and too intensely, it’s a very sympathetic type of response. Things constrict and tighten. I think that’s when people run into a lot of problems, versus that parasympathetic, relaxed type of state that keeps proper blood flow and does not overly constrict the muscles.

If we’re doing that correctly and slowly, with the right lube and in the right way, I see many, many people do this effectively without ever getting any sort of hemorrhoids or fissures and having zero problems. That being said, if you have a tendency to that and you have a history of it, this is something that you might want to be careful of. Talk to your doctor about this. I would definitely recommend asking, are you cleared for this? Have these hemorrhoids been gone for a long time? Have you had any signs of them?

If you have had them gone for years, then hopefully the vessels have healed. But again, just going really, really slowly when you do it tends to help people a lot more.

Lindsey Parsons:

And so the anal douching doesn’t remove your microbiome?

Dr. Mueller:

I mean, it’s just a small effect. It’s going to probably be similar to doing just a little bit of an enema, right? So you’re not getting far up. It’s really largely just like a small amount into the rectum, so you’re not really getting into that large intestine much at all. So there is not much of a risk of really impacting the microbiome and anything. It would be extremely small just because of the locality of it.

Lindsey Parsons:

And are there any supplements that you recommend for people who practice anal sex regularly?

Dr. Mueller:

Supplements, not as much. But obviously I always keep up with the microbiome from that standpoint. But I would say more things like hygiene, washing, and getting really good quality lube.

Now I mentioned silicone and oil-based are two that I like. The most common natural oil that people tend to use when they’re reading things online is coconut oil. We do want to be a little bit careful about coconut oil, because things can get sloppy and messy, and coconut oil, when you’re rubbing it around there, will probably get a little bit near the vaginal canal. Coconut oil is very antimicrobial, and that’s great when you have an actual infection, but when you don’t, you really don’t want to be using something antimicrobial near the vagina, especially because of the microbiome issues we talked about earlier.

So even though coconut oil can be lovely from a standpoint of smell and viscosity, it’s really not the best oil-based lube to use. What works a lot better is MCT oil. I have MCT oil with CBD. CBD is another amazing thing to use. I have product discounts on that, so I’ll give you my product page for your links so people can get some great MCT oil with CBD in it that’s used for these types of sexual play.

I’d say the one thing in answer to your question that you might want to consider, I guess a couple things. I don’t generally find that people need supplements with anal play. But if you wanted to do something, you might consider something like witch hazel, which is very healing to the veins, or something like vitamin C. We do see that when vitamin C levels are low, veins and blood vessels can be a little more fragile. Vitamin C is an important nutrient for the strength of those blood vessels. Those are a couple of things that, if people are worried about it and want to make sure their veins and blood vessels all over their body and in particular the vasculature of the anus are strong, they could consider as well.

Lindsey Parsons:

I’m just thinking about that because I’ve seen advertisements for fiber supplements that were hinting at anal sex, and they were gummies. And when people take fiber gummies, I’m like, yeah, there’s really not going to be a ton of fiber in those gummies!

Dr. Mueller:

Correct, exactly!

Lindsey Parsons:

If you want some fiber, you’re going to need a scoop of it. It’s going to be bigger than the size of a gummy.

Dr. Mueller:

Yes, exactly, exactly. It’s some of these things, I think we can get really gimmicky, and that’s why I think shows like yours are so important, because without the knowledge, it’s easier to just be like, oh, we have all these things that taste bad and like, I get to take fiber as a gummy, great!

Lindsey Parsons:

Right? A candy, and it’s good for me? Totally.

Dr. Mueller:

But those things, from an efficacy standpoint, are probably like a healthy version of a candy at best.

Lindsey Parsons:

So can you talk a little bit about the pH of the lube you use in a vagina versus in a butt?

Dr. Mueller:

Yeah. So pH is really important, and pH actually comes into play a lot in our water-based lubes. So in our water-based lubes, what is important is that a lot of the chemicals in these types of lubes can really throw off the pH of the vagina. And so when you’re just getting your standard thing at a sex store or just on Amazon, you really are at risk. And when you throw off the pH of the vagina, you run into the risk of infections, and those things we talked about earlier. So one of the best things from a water-based lube perspective to really preserve the pH of the vagina, I have found to be our aloe-based products. And, I’m sure it will make a lot of sense to you as a gut expert, because we know aloe, for the guts and for all mucous membranes, is incredibly healing.

And so what the researchers of aloe-based products have found is that these are good for the health of the membrane of the gut, but aloe can also help the health of the membrane of the vagina, and it helps the microbiome of the vagina. It helps preserve that, it helps keep the pH really consistent. And so a good aloe-based lube is going to consider all of these things. And so that’s a really important thing to consider there. It’s really the water-based lubes that tend to have the most emphasis on pH that I have found. I haven’t found as much of the conversation on pH on some of the oil-based lubes or those kind of things, because I don’t think they throw off the health of the microbiome so much and so anally, you’re not even using the water-based lube, so that’s not as important. And you know, again, if people want a good one with product discounts, you can find all of that on my product page, on my website, at mylibidodoc, and I’ll give you that link like I said.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah, right, but you wouldn’t want low pH, right, an acidic lube in an anus, right?

Dr. Mueller:

But you’re typically not going to find that in like an oil- or silicon-based lube.

Lindsey Parsons:

Right. So I have a number of clients, both male and female, who admit to having a low libido. So other than obviously working on their relationship, their communication, all of the psychological parts and their overall physical health, is there anything you recommend in terms of supplements or anything else to help with libido?

Dr. Mueller:

I really find that low libido is a combination of three pillars, and so pillar one is all of our physical root causes. So people can go take my free quiz there at libidoquiz.com. If you take that quiz, it’ll spit out answers for your ideas on testing as well. So that, again, that’s at libidoquiz.com so that’s a great resource. That’s the physical root cause pillar.

Then the second pillar is the personal root cause. So the personal root cause is, how well do you know your own body? Do you have any body shame? Do you have any sexual shame? If you are finding yourself in bed and making love or doing anything in the intimacy space, and find yourself checking out a lot where you’re like, oh man, my mind was wandering. Some level of that is normal, right? Some level of, oh wow, I was having sex, and the grocery lists started going. Most women, if you talk to them, they’re going to admit that that happened to them, because we are multitaskers by nature as women.

But if you’re finding that goodness, every time you’re getting closer and closer to pleasure, you’re just constantly checking out and you can almost never be present, that’s, I’m not talking about the random thing, oh yeah, I shouldn’t be doing the list. I’m bringing myself back. That can happen. But if you’re like, wow, yeah, every time I get touched here, I’m disassociating, I’m checking out of my body. That can be a big sign that there’s some level of trauma. And it doesn’t have to be big T trauma. This can be as simple as somebody performing oral sex on somebody and giving a weird face when they did it, and all of a sudden you’re thinking, oh my goodness, they gave a weird face because I look funny there or whatever, right? There can be these very simple, small t traumas that lead to a lot of shame. So we definitely want to consider that.

And then another big thing in the personal root pillar is, how well do you know your own body? Meaning, if we’re looking at the vulva, right and so it’s like if we’re looking at the vulva and we look at the clitoris, a lot of people think of just this nub at the top, but the clitoris actually has these long legs. And these long legs extend, and that is a huge part of the female pleasure, the legs of the clitoris, which is not the part that you see with the naked eye. And so a lot of this comes in understanding one’s own body through personal exploration around, oh, this part of my labia, this part of my outer labia, my inner labia, the space between my labia, this is actually a huge point where the uniqueness of oneself gets turned on, right? So we don’t know that. It is impossible for our partner to know that.

And then the third pillar really is in that intra communication, am I safe? Do I feel trust? Do we have desire mismatch? Are we able to talk about that and find ways of getting back on the same page? What happens when I ask for my needs, wants, preference and desires, those kind of things.

So it’s a long-winded answer to your question. I mean, there are some herbs we can try, our damianas* and our Horny Goat weeds*. And there’s herbs like that. I don’t get into the aphrodisiac world because, personally, I have found aphrodisiac foods to at best be another marketing thing. The example I give is that oysters are an aphrodisiac. If you look up common aphrodisiacs, oysters will pretty much always come up, probably because they have high amounts of zinc and zinc is helpful for testosterone, which is helpful for the libido.

But if you don’t like oysters, and people have a love hate relationship with oysters generally, and you don’t like oysters, and you’re sitting there and you’re just trying to get it to slide down your throat, and it’s disgusting and it’s vile, and it’s taking you out of your presence and pleasure, probably not going to do much for your libido, right? Just take some zinc. Get your zinc in other ways.

And so from that standpoint it’s a healthy diet, free of toxins, balance, just all the normal things that people have heard so many times on your show, are really supportive. And yes, we can do things supporting testosterone. Tribulus* works very well. Shilajit* as an herb works really well. Tongkat Ali*, all these herbs can be very supportive of testosterone, and I have seen clinical results with them. The studies are really positive. So there, yes, there are some things we can do to support.

But the number one thing I see, and why I’m answering this in relation to the three pillars, is because the number one thing I see is that just about anything that we talk about in health, it’s not one root cause. And so it’s very easy for people to get on a supplement and be like, oh, I didn’t notice anything from this. And it doesn’t mean it’s not helpful. It means that if there are ten different pieces of the root pie all in these three different pillars, that if we just address one of these ten, it’s probably not enough for us to notice that improvement in libido and desire. We really do need to make that shift.

Lindsey Parsons:

Those supplements you mentioned, it seemed like most of them were ones for men, is that accurate?

Dr. Mueller:

No, not at all just but thank you for clarifying. Most of those things are things for testosterone, but they absolutely work on women. And as you know, from being on testosterone, like we need testosterone as women too. So those are more testosterone building supplements, but they are going to be great for libido, for women or men, right?

Lindsey Parsons:

Because testosterone helps with libido and women.

Dr. Mueller:

Exactly. And that’s a huge misunderstanding.I’m glad you brought that up, because I think a lot of people just think testosterone, men, testosterone, men and they do have more testosterone than us women, but if you look at estrogen, progesterone and testosterone as women, what we actually have the most of in our body is testosterone. We have more testosterone than other sex hormones. We just have way less than the guys.

Lindsey Parsons:

So totally separate topic. But on our previous recording, you talked about having had positive CdtB and vinculin antibodies, and therefore having post infectious IBS. So I’m curious if your vinculin antibodies have normalized. And if so, how did you do it?

Dr. Mueller:

They have normalized. And it’s hard to say how I did it, just because of the standpoint of, like, I do so many things. So I wish I could say, oh, this is so clear. But I think it is probably a combination of healing the gut and doing things like a lot of our demulcent herbs, our aloe, our marshmallow, those kinds of things. I did some glutamine as well. Did a lot of our serum bovine immunoglobulin. So definitely a lot of work on the gut. I did a round of Rifaximin for SIBO as well, as well as followed up with a low dose erythromycin, so worked on my migrating motor complex that way. So I imagine also, since we see that vigilance is tied in with the MMC, and we see that that low dose erythromycin can help with that, that that was a portion of that. It was also getting out of a moldy environment, getting the mold out of my body. You know, there have been a couple run ins I’ve had through my life with mold. Once, very early on, which is where my career was launched. Sadly, that’s not the first time I’ve ended up in a house that had mold. So I think some of that too, is just like detoxing some of that out. So I wish I could have a straight answer, this was the thing, but my feeling was, it’s a combination.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah, it’s good to know, yeah. Okay. Well, I think that was everything I wanted to ask. Any final parting words you’d like to share with us?

Dr. Mueller:

I think the biggest thing is it’s so easy to think about sexual wellness, and I think the number of people will say, well, I’ve just decided that that’s not something that me and my partner do anymore. And like, we’re best friends, and we don’t need that. And I think a really important conversation to have is to ask your partner what sex and what sexual intimacy provides for them. And a lot of times, people will say, connection, love, stress release, all these different things, and to really get a sense of is this truly impacting your relationship or not. And for some people, maybe it’s not. I mean, just because surveys say all sorts of things doesn’t mean that you’re part of the survey, right? There are anomalies. There are people that fall out of those normals, all those things. So it’s entirely possible. I believe that some people are incredibly happy in their relationships without this.

But I think oftentimes that comes from an acceptance of like, well, we’re not having it so we’re just going to make peace with this, where there’s this subtle resentment that is actually building up. And that’s what I really hope to help couples work through and get stronger in their relationship together. So I really do encourage you to have a conversation around like, what does sex provide, as well as, is there anything in your life from a connection, communication, emotional support and just feeling good in your body and your relationship, that maybe a lack of it is there? And the whole point of this conversation is not to throw anybody under the bus, not to shame anybody, but to get a sense of just like anything else, it’s just data, and to say, are we off track by not working on this in our life, and is it impacting our relationship? And if so, the goal there is to find the motivation then to start making this a priority. And it’s no different than having a conversation with a nutritionist around like, what do I need to do to really make sure I’m choosing good food and start prioritizing that. Or with a personal trainer, or anything else, you’re just really looking to say, what is the level that this choice is actually causing an impact on myself, my wellness and my relationship, and is it important enough for me to come together with my partner and work on it? So I think it’s a really good step for people to consider so we’re not just shoving things under the rug because these conversations are things that we’re not taught to deal with. And you know, if you need any help, definitely grab my book at wanttowantit.com and I’d be happy to help you all.

Lindsey Parsons:

Yeah, no, I, I agree that healthy sex life just brings such good feelings of well being and the skin to skin contact and oxytocin release and just like such a bonding thing when it’s working well, and such a source of stress when it’s not, so it’s definitely worth working to get to the place where it’s working well. So thank you for bringing this conversation to this gut health podcast.

Dr. Mueller:

Thank you for having me, Lindsey, it’s always a pleasure.