Revitalizing Health: Your Gut’s Role In Chronic Conditions

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Hey, Laura. Thanks so much for having me.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

This is so good. I brought you in because I wanted an expert who is aligned with the way that I practice to help unpack gut health and the importance of the order of operations when it comes to solving your chronic health conditions. We can do some myth-busting today about gut health. We can give our audience a bunch of actionable items and get them supported in their gut health journey. I am excited to have you here. You are a certified functional medicine and functional nutrition therapy practitioner. You have an online practice. Your focus is finding and fixing the root causes of fatigue, depression, anxiety, digestive symptoms, and other issues. You have a huge podcast. You have probably got around 20 million downloads on your podcast at this point. I think.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

I quit counting, but yes, I was somewhere around there when we stopped counting.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes. You also offer at-home functional medicine training courses through your Functional Academy of Medicine and epigenetics on gut mold and energy issues. You train practitioners, and I know my audience here. I want you to know that when I hire health coaches for my team, I put them through Evan’s training courses. This is why I have Evan here, because the way that he practices is just incredible, and the way he teaches is as well. Welcome. Let us start by sharing with our audience: Why is it important that I am bringing a gut health expert to talk on a silent killers summit where we are focusing on the root cause of inflammatory and chronic diseases? We could not do this without a gut expert. Let us unpack why this is so important that we even start here.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Sure. Well, one of my friends at the gym is a gastroenterologist. He has been a gastro doctor for 20 years. We got on the subject of leaky gut the other day, and he got so pissed off at me because he was like, if I hear that term leaky gut one more time, I am going to lose it. I said, Okay, fine. Would you rather me use the term intestinal permeability? He said, Yes, please. I said, Okay, fine. When people hear about leaky gut, they will see leaky gut supplements marketed everywhere. It is a billion-dollar industry to provide supplements that are supposed to soothe and heal up a leaky gut, a.k.a., a permeable gut barrier. Even in just the last 20 years, there has been a new onslaught to this very delicate, one-cell thick epithelial barrier in the gut that is separating your intestines from the bloodstream. When you have a combination of glyphosate, dicamba, and 2-4D showing up on every single client’s urine that you test, you are fighting an uphill battle against modern-day toxicity. 

When I lived in Kentucky, we had a lot of acreage, and it was amazing. But we were next to an agricultural area. My third daughter, Emma, was born with a cleft lip and cleft palate. We had no idea because that was the one baby we did not do an ultrasound on. When you look at the literature you put in glyphosate cleft, you put in glyphosate, but you put in glyphosate, microbiome, all the literature there, which is that even parts per billion of this stuff can tear apart the intestinal barrier. 

I was at church a couple of weeks ago, and I saw a little boy. A beautiful woman was carrying this little boy, and he was strapped up from his elbow to his hand. He has been covered in these bandages. He looks like a mummy, and his skin is a mess, as is his face and his cheeks. This poor kid has psoriasis so bad at two or three years old that he scratches himself until he bleeds. In the first place, to fix cases like this, which are more common than ever before, we must work on the gut. I brought her over to my house after. I am like, Let me give you some of this, some of that, and some of that. I guarantee this kid’s got these infections. He has this problem with detox and drainage. He has this problem with his liver and kidneys, this problem with lymph. Let me help you fix all this. 

I assumed that there are no nontoxic people left on planet Earth because I have tested clients in every corner of the globe: New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, South America, Latin America, Mexico, Canada, the U.S., across Europe, and even Dubai. You name it, I have had people everywhere, and we have measured urine, and all these people and everyone else have something. If you do not focus on those toxins disrupting the gut barrier, then, of course, we will get into infections. I just do not think you are going to thrive. I do not think you are going to perform at your best. 

Even if you are listening and you are like, Well, my gut is pretty okay, it could be better. If it is better, that can improve how you function, how you perform, how much money you make, how good of a wife or husband you are, and how good of a parent you are. Because if there is something off there, this is affecting nutrient absorption, nutrient production, neurotransmitters, and on and on. This is a big deal.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I love that you just said that there are no nontoxic people left on planet Earth. I do not love that you said that, This is a truth bomb here. I love your transparency, and what I want to say to the audience now is that Evan and I do not stop working on our guts. We are living in a first-world country, and we are exposed to toxins constantly. Our process, or journey, of working on our gut and detoxing never stops. I just did a toxin test a few weeks ago, and I have found that two new metals, thorium, and cesium, are showing up on my toxin test. I am like, okay, I need to do some metal detox now. 

Mercury is high on me now. I have done so much toxic work, and it is like, What is going on? What am I getting exposed to now? What is falling from the sky on me? In my travels, what did I consume? What, water? Yes. That water is a great source. If you are in hotels and traveling, you are going to get exposed to purified water because you are not at home all the time. Anyhow, what I want to say is that we are not done working on our guts. We have to be. It is just as important as any other hygiene process that we go through from day to day. We take a shower every day, we wash our laundry, and we take care of our home environment. We also take care of our guts. We do not stop.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Yes, well, it is funny that you are in California, because if I were to plot on the globe, if we had a globe here in front of us, if I were to say cesium, I would plot you in California, on the coast, close to the coast. I always, I do not know. We could go crazy here. We could turn this into a big tangent. There is Fukushima in Japan that is still leaking. They are still dumping that wastewater from the nuclear reactor, which I think is happening in 2011. Here we are, 13 years later. But any time I see Cesium, it is always with California clients. Now, of course, I see it in Utah; I see it in Idaho and other places, but yes, that is interesting. Yes, it sounds like you still have work to do. I do, too. I just resubmitted a urine sample yesterday. I just mailed off a kit myself, so this idea that you are going to magically detox everything and then all of a sudden rainbows appear and you are just done and you truly reach that checkered flag. I do not know. I just do not think that exists. I would hope that we can reframe people’s mindset to just elevating. There is no limit to this. Think of that as just an abundance mindset. 

We could continue to elevate how good we feel because if you look back at your childhood and look at people that are three years old five years old, 10, 15, 20, we test generations. I will look at the grandchild, the child, the mother, and the grandmother, and we will see the same toxicities, the same infections, and the same problems throughout three or four generations all the time. In my head, I somewhat fantasized about when I was a teenager. I think that I felt so good. But when I look back, I am like, No, not. My wife is like, No, babe. Like when we were teenagers, we took naps all the time, and our skin was not very good, and my skin was not very good. You had IBS, and you had sleep issues. I am like, Yes, okay. What am I looking for then? We think we want to go back to how we used to feel. But if you study hard enough and look at yourself deeply enough, you may find you never felt that optimal. What you are achieving now is brand new to you.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

That is how I look at it now.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I am in better health at 51 than I was at 17, for sure. First, I know I am aging in reverse. I know. 

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

You look great for 51. I would not say you look older than 37 now.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Well, thank you, Evan. You have another one of those who has a baby face. But you are. You are getting up there at age too.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

I am 32. I will be 33 in January.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Well, you look like you are 22.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

All good. I will take it.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, let us get into this. Like you and me, we both agree that we love gut testing. We love to know what is happening in the gut. We both like to start here as a foundation for healing. If we are going to detox somebody, if we are going to get the metals out, we are going to get the environmental toxins out, and we are going to get the mold out. If we are going to get the nutrient deficiencies corrected, we need to start with gut health. Can we talk about why this is a starting point? I tell people when they come into my community that I do not care what work you have done before; it does not matter what you have done. We have to look at our gut again. If your gut test was six months ago, we need to look here again and see what is happening. Before I put you on any big detox protocol, Can you talk about why this is important?

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

For sure, and to speak on the timeline of it? We have seen big changes in the GI map in six weeks with people. Yes, you are right.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes, and we both love the GI map. It is a great test. It is easy to read. It makes sense to people. It has been around for decades. It is a great test. Why do we start there?

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Well, that is how you can find some of the big smoking guns that are derailing your health. I have been the parasite guy, the gut guy, for probably a decade. When I first started my podcast in 2011, 2012, there was like nobody out there at the time talking about this stuff. It was my selfish struggle that I was trying to resolve. But luckily, the stool testing is what got me maybe 70% better because that is where I discovered I had H. Pylori, I discovered I had giardia, and I discovered I had cryptosporidium. These parasites, if you were to go to a conventional GI doctor, could get missed. They probably will get missed. I want to say possibly it happens all the time. H. Pylori, as well. Sometimes you see false negatives from conventional testing. Luckily, the DNA sampling of the stool that we can do now is so sensitive that we can pick up stuff where other places get missed, and it is only one day, one sample.

I am not getting paid by them to tell you that. But it is great for that reason because even as a young child, which could potentially have my practice now as a child, which I love, it is super fun, especially because I have three kids. But when you take a child who has been to the pediatrician and they have no answers, but maybe throw them on some antibiotics, which is a terrible idea, if we run the GI map, we can see, oh, look, poor guy. He has got H. Pylori. My daughter, Summer, she had H. Pylori when she was two years old. I think all the time about how if I had not found that and if I had not treated that so early in her life, how would that progressed five, six, or seven years later? When do you look at your neuro process? The whole neurotransmitter function—dopamine, serotonin, endorphins—we measure this on organic acid testing, and 99 out of 100 people have an issue with brain chemistry, I typically trace it back to the gut because there are many cases where I did not come in with specific amino acids to raise or tweak neurotransmitters.

We simply cleared gut infections, and all of a sudden, brain chemistry started to self-regulate. the whole gut-brain connection people do talk about, but I do not think you understand it until you have been through it, which is me. I was in Austin in 2013. I remember lying on the floor with my wife and having a panic attack for no good reason. It was within a few weeks after that I tested my stool and I found H. Pylori. If you look into the literature, if you put in H. Pylori anxiety, all depression is there. These infections can hijack your normal emotional processing and emotional regulation. If you are a woman listening, you are on antidepressants, you are on anti-anxiety medication, and you feel overwhelmed about the possibility of getting off your pharmaceuticals simply by looking in this place and fixing these infections. You could reverse 20 years of depression within probably six weeks. It has happened before clinically.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes. This is one of the biggest breakthroughs that our client population has had: mood stabilization. Whether it is anxiety, depression, anger, or whatever it is, people’s families start to notice, like, mom, dad, you are so much happier now. You have so much, and you are such a pleasure to be around. This is what people want: to fix their relationships. If you want to have a better relationship, fix your gut.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Amen. We have saved marriages I was joking with our mutual friend Shivan because we did a webinar on gut the other day and I told her that I have saved many marriages because, let us role play if this is okay with you.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes. Okay. Let us go.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

I want to recall how this goes down. Okay. Here is what happens: the woman who may get exposed to mold from college, an office, or whatever. Okay, so she has the mold exposure, which I think opens up the back door, weakens the immune system, lowers natural killer cells, throws off the TH1 and TH2 balance, etc., opening a back door for Candida to move in. Okay. Maybe now she has a yeast infection, so now she feels unsexy. Okay? Now the sex life is already going downhill. But then she has H. Pylori. She has a couple of parasites, and now she has bacterial overgrowth. Her fat digestion is terrible. She has had messy stools for her pancreatic last days and is dropping. She is not just digesting well at all. Her calprotectin is through the roof. Now she has all this gut inflammation. She has messy stools; he has yeast; she has bacterial issues. She thinks she smells bad, and she might think that she looks bad, and she might be bloated or pale. She could have issues with her skin complexion and just not feel the best overall. Now, the husband’s coming after, Hey, honey, I want a piece of that. She is like, No way; she does not touch me; she does not look at me. I feel gross. So then, the marriage.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

This is so good, Evan. I want a piece of that. Okay, keep going.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Okay.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

We are just being real here, everyone. Either now, people are like, I love these two, or they are like, this is crazy. Get me out of here. But I have a feeling like this is better than television, and people are, yes, leaning in.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Amen. Yes. This is just the way I talk to my clients. Do I just keep it real with you guys? Because we are all humans at the end of the day, no matter how or how many letters you have after your name, you are human. Now there is an issue where let us throw the man under the bus here, too. Now he has erectile dysfunction because some of these infections can affect his erectile ability. Now you are in a hypercoagulable state. You have issues with blood flow and circulation. The man may have poor erections. Maybe there is an issue with getting or maintaining an erection. They are all they do: sit on opposite ends of the couch, send each other Instagram reels, and the intimacy is gone. You do that, and you extrapolate that out for five, 10, or 15 years. Then you wake up one day and you do not even know who they are. They are your friend, they are your roommate, and they are your partner.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Your best friend, maybe.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

For sure. But they are not your lover anymore. I think truly, just based on what I have seen clinically, I talk about this stuff all day. I would say that 98 out of 100 women that I work with who have gut issues have an issue that is deeper than just the gut, just the starting place. But it is deeper than that. It is a lack of passion. It is a lack of joy. It is the lack of fulfillment, the lack of purpose. I think a lot of that stems from the microbiome issues because we had one woman who was depressed for 20 years. I am like, Okay, that is overwhelming. Like, how do I approach this? But you cannot overthink it. 

When your protocols work, they work. You just do it. You do what you have to do. We do it. We do a follow-up, give or take. Eight weeks later, I am checking in with her. How is the depression? I am not depressed. You have been depressed for 20 years. What do you mean, you are not depressed? Like, is it a little better? Like, give me a scale of 1 to 10. 10 is the worst, one is the best, or whatever. She is like, No, I just do not have that anymore. It was so foreign to me that she quickly forgot and just erased that part of her, which was part of her for 20 years. All we did.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

It was wild.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Yes, we did no herbal antidepressants. Like typically, I would do rhodiola, maybe some other adaptogens, etc. Maybe we are going to throw in specific amino acids for serotonin, endorphins, GABA, and dopamine. We did none of that. It was a gut protocol. We had some low-histamine probiotics. We had some binder support in there, and she is not depressed anymore. That is incredible.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

It is. We see this all the time. You and I are both in our practice. It is remarkable. Once people start cleaning up their gut, and once you clean up the gut, you are now ready to do the deeper detox. What I want to do now, I want to apologize, and we are going to get into this conversation deeper. What I would like to do in the next part of our conversation is go into some of the markers on the GI map test. I want to talk about what they mean and then give our audience some takeaways to start solving this. 

I want to thank you so much for joining us today for the first half of our talk on gut health for our audience. I hope you found our conversation insightful, helpful, and fun. 

If you are a summit purchaser, stay here because we are about to dove even deeper into this discussion with Evan. If you are not, click on the button on this page to get access to a continuation of this conversation and many others, and get the tools you need to reclaim your health. 

If you are watching this continuation of my talk with Evan, thank you for being a valuable member of our community, and we are going to dive back in. 

Evan, I want to talk about some of the markers on the test. This is one of the reasons that I like to have my health coaches train with you because of the way that you break down the GI map test. Then I want to talk about some things that people can get going with to start solving their gut issues. But I am going to jump to the end of the test. I want to talk about calprotectin for a second. I want to talk about this inflammatory marker. When that calprotectin is high, this is a marker of inflammation, oftentimes an inflammatory bowel disease like Crohn’s colitis. Even the Western world uses a calprotectin marker to measure inflammatory bowel disease. But what I want you to talk about is: what does it mean when that thing is a zero? When you see somebody has an overgrowth of opportunistic bacteria, they may have a protozoa parasite in there, and you see a calprotectin of zero. Where does your mind go? For our audience, zero would mean zero inflammation.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

My assumption and I was listening to a talk about peptides last night, and the part of the discussion that came up was that when the immune system is so suppressed, you cannot mount the response. This guy on this talk, this doctor, was talking about how he had Lyme. He knew he had Lyme, but when he ran his antibodies, he only showed up with one band. It was like Band 41. But then, when he started to help his immune system improve, all of a sudden he had so many bands. I would like to hear your opinion on it as well, but when I see a zero of calprotectin, I assume, okay, this person has such a damaged immune system, they cannot mount an inflammatory response. These are the people who may brag that they never get sick, but then all of a sudden they pop up with cancer, and we are like Holy crap, but you never got sick. It is this smoldering thing, but you are too sick to respond to the insult to your gut, which is this parasite, that bacteria, that yeast, and that fungus, and therefore it shows zero.

But what we will find is that in this case, this is a little girl that we had in the clinic. She was, let us see, six years old. This is Paloma. This was a little girl. We have a little bit of data on her here. She was five against us when we started. Developmental delay was a complaint; it was extremely gassy. Skin health was a problem. Her social skills were not good, and her emotional stability was not good. Now this is the opposite of zero. I do not want to take you away from zero. But in her case, Calprotectin was ridiculous.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I have never seen calprotectin that high. That is it. I am just looking at her whole thing. She has blood. Her secretory IGA is off. My goodness, this poor little thing.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Yes. This is a six-year-old, synovial activation protein. This is potentially even turning into an autoimmune condition. This could be something like Crohn’s ulcerative colitis. It does not look good when there is occult blood, which is microscopic bleeding. If you are watching this and if you run this and see blood, in most cases we can resolve this. There have been a few cases where we have recommended a colonoscopy, and we have seen polyps and other issues show up. But a lot of the time, we can fix this on our own. But yes, this is a mess. This is why we love the GI map because it shows what is under the hood. You are lucky if you can get a GI doctor to run Calprotectin, but the chances of them running this other stuff are not likely.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I love that we are just showing this now. I did not know you were going to have this on hand, so this is great. Let us scroll up. By the way, I am on the same page as you. If calprotectin is zero and you have a lot of obvious gut conditions, commensal bacteria, and pathogens going on, this is not a good sign. This is a sign that your immune system is wiped out. We should see a normal inflammatory response when you have infections. We are looking at the first page of the GI map here, and this is the pathogenic section. Let us talk about this for a second. She has got a couple of pathogenic bacteria here.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Yes. This happens all the time. We see it in kids. Kids play in the dirt, which is great. You can potentially get E. coli from soil, food, water, etc., maybe even through maternal transfer. Some of these things are potentially coming for mom depending on how the birth went, her vaginal health, whether it was a C-section, etc.? When you get to page two, you will see H. Pylori’s starting to creep up. Likely some of the herbs that were used to knock down, let us say the staff or let us say the E. coli. You see, Candida is here. Some of those herbs have such a broad spectrum that we may even be able to knock down some of them. Even though it was not flagged high, it is still on my radar always. In her case, too, I am surprised it is not higher. But a lot of times in these kids, you will see the beta blocker on a day go sky high. This is a huge problem. If you look at the literature on breast cancer, colon cancer, or many other cancers, a lot of it has a root in issues with the glucagon addition pathway, which is how we conjugate meaning. We wrap up in a straight jacket to prevent the recirculation of these toxins in these hormones.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Let us talk about this beta-glucan quickly because I love that we have this on the GI map test. When we want to, when we are trying to get an idea of how someone’s body, or how efficiently someone’s body can detox, can expel toxins through the GI tract. If your body’s working correctly, toxins should funnel to the bowels and be moved out of the body with daily bowel elimination. When this beta-glucan is on it is high. This enzyme just makes toxins recirculate back into the body. This is a glimpse into it, Huh? Is this person going to even be able to detox if I start taking them? I am asking the audience: Can you imagine if we put you on a heavy detox protocol yet you cannot get up, get the toxins out of your bowels, they just recirculate back into your body. This is a critical marker. Yes.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Yes, it is. In her case, it is not terrible. You can see it is creeping up here. But overall, the good news is that we can get this down by fixing the gut. A lot of times, just the gut protocols we are using will self-correct. That is decent. Now, I would like to just briefly show some other stuff here, too. What we like to do is stack the stool with the urine because a lot of times you will find things on organic acids that you just do not find on the stool. For example, the mold colonization markers are incredibly valuable. In her case, it looked like she was okay. 

But this does show something different than the stool. The stool showed Candida was just moderate here. It says organic acid; no, it is higher. We do see some carbolic acid too, which could be linked to Fusarium, and then also the stool and the GI map; it did miss the Clostridia. When we see kids on the spectrum, when we see kids that have issues with social development or being with other kids, or when these are the kids that are getting in trouble at school, maybe they get slapped with some type of diagnosis, some acronym, and those are not helpful acronyms because this is the real acronym you need to be looking at, which is HPHPA.

This is an organic acid that becomes elevated when you are growing clostridia in the gut. Any kid who is on the spectrum or any kid who has social or emotional problems, nine times out of 10, they are going to have this elevation. Now if we just paint the whole picture, we have the stool, we have the urine, and we did not even look at the others. We could look at Michael, this poor kid off the charts with ochratoxin. Even though her test did not show Aspergillus, she is off the charts with ochratoxin. I think she is never going to fix her gut until the ochratoxin is resolved. The rest of it was clear; we ran a toxin panel just for fun. Let us see what showed up there. 

Gasoline additives are like every other human. Styrene and ethylbenzene are chemicals like every other human. 

But overall, this chemical profile. It scares me when we get to like the chemicals here. Organic phosphates are pesticide formulation chemicals. This is scary. The 95th percentile would be 16. She is 92. This means she is higher than, say, 99.9% of humans that run this test. When you take all of that, you try to condense all of this into a digestible protocol that, in this case, the child can handle and that the parents can keep up with. If you are an adult, truthfully, just forget the kid part. We see adults who look like this all the time. Now it is a matter of peeling back the layers. Getting the gut, lowering the inflammation, working on the chemicals, working on the mold, working on the yeast, and working on the bacteria. There are a good seven, eight, or nine root causes here that could change this person’s life forever. If someone is selling you, or marking you on the idea that there is this one silver bullet that is going to fix you. It is probably not true. It looks more like this.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

It does. if somebody is marketing to you that you just need to fix your hormones, or you just need to fix your thyroid, or you just need to fix your gut, run. Because it is not that it is a much bigger picture, and there is an underlying reason. Yes, we need to fix your gut, but why is the gut disrupted? Is it glyphosate? Is it a parasite? Is it something like what is happening in there that is creating this disruption in the immune system? It is not just one thing. It is, and there is an order of operations to solve this as well. You do not just run into somebody without supporting their drainage pathways in their organs of detoxification and their gut. That they do not drop. You do not hinder them, drop their energy, and make them feel lousy.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Yes, there are some people whose constitution is strong enough. You can go to in liver, adrenals, or kidneys for lymph support, start killing bugs, and detoxify stuff away. But for the vast majority of people, even in the last five or six years, their constitution is much weaker. Therefore, we do have to tiptoe into this more. I have talked with other practitioners, and I am sure you have seen the same thing: in the last five years alone, people are appearing to be more sick, more symptomatic, and more sensitive than me. Yes, we have to take our time.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Sensitive snowflake. I love it. Okay, I want to talk a little bit more about some of the markers on the GI map because this is supportive of our community in terms of the commensal healthy bacteria for a moment. Those are the good guys. Those are the bacteria that we want to thrive. When you look at the GI map, you want all of these to fall in the green range, and sometimes they are high, sometimes they are low, and sometimes they are a mixed bag. and this can shift in a matter of overnight hours, days, or weeks, depending on what you are eating, your stress levels, and what you are exposed to. When I do the GI map test, I look at trends. I try to look at three trends. I look at patterns like, What’s the pattern of the commensal bacteria? Rather than getting fixated on each bacteria, how do you approach it?

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Agreed. Here is the thing that we know, and I am not trying to turn this into a mold episode, but here is the reality. If you look in the literature and type in mycotoxins, lactobacillus, or just mycotoxins microbiome, what you are going to find is that mold toxin specifically lowers your lactobacillus and bifido, which are the most important bacteria in the gut that help you do so many things. If we look at the trend of commensal and we see everything is trending low, sure, we can come in and we can start to supplement, and we could throw in all these good microbes, and that is great. We can do good work like that. But truthfully, until the toxin issue is resolved, I think you are fighting an uphill battle, and it is going to be difficult to fully resolve the good guys until the toxins are gone.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Absolutely. Then, in terms, let us talk about the opportune mystic bacteria section. These are bacteria that normally live inside the human body, and at low levels, they are not a problem. But when they grow, when they start to overgrow, they can become problematic. The way I explain this to my community is that it is like teenagers. If you have two of them hanging out in your living room watching a movie, everything’s good. But if they call 30 of their friends, now you have a party at your house, and now you have a problem: you have a noise problem. They are eating all your food; they are roughhousing; they are breaking stuff. that is like these bacteria. When they overgrow, they become problematic, like a group of teenagers. We love teenagers, but we also know that they can be poor. Here you go. This is the opportunistic overgrowth section. If all these were in the normal range, we would not have a problem. But when they start to overgrow, what happens, Evan?

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Well, bad bugs make toxins, which make you feel like crap. In some cases, these bacteria can then be a prefect. Was it for an autoimmune disease? In the case of Klebsiella, we know Klebsiella is linked to Hashimoto’s. Any woman with Hashimoto’s autoimmune thyroid issues could potentially have Klebsiella. If we see thyroid antibodies in the blood and then Klebsiella in the stool, we can match those up and go. Yes, your thyroid issue. This is a piece of the puzzle. When we talk about psoriatic arthritis, or RA, or even juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, we see a big link with Proteus, for example, or even Central Beckner. This whole category here is even more important to look at, which are the inflammatory and autoimmune-related bacteria. If you see these, they are even a higher priority than just the dysbiotic flora.

Now, when it comes to children, when we hear the term, pandas, pediatric acute neuropsychiatric syndrome associated with strep, or disorder-associated strep, this means that your kid has sensory issues. They have issues with clothing, maybe their food sensitivities, etc. We are going to be prioritizing working on the strep because of what happens when stress is this high; in her case, it was over ten times higher than normal. The antibodies that go to target strep could accidentally target the brain. Now you have this overnight OCD, which can occur in adults as well. Yes, we will prioritize the staff, the strep, and the morganella. But if I had to just pick one of the biggest priorities on this sheet, this particular woman, we would say Klebsiella. It is not like I am going to do anything that different. I am going to use herbs that are going to knock all this stuff down to normal. But just in terms of helping the client understand where your issues are coming from, I would point a finger at this one, and if we went back up, you would see that there was pylori here too. I think this is going to be another one of my top priorities.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes, absolutely. Go down to the bottom. Let us take a look at the data. This marker?

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Better than the little girl was.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Interesting look at her digestive markers. Despite all of that, she seems to be okay with the digestion piece. But let us talk about the ingestion piece for a moment, because I love this section of the test as well, which is this de-autocratic state that occurred in the last few days. Oftentimes, if you do not get digestion dialed in if you do not support this area if you need it, you will be on a hamster wheel forever trying to solve your bloating, your constipation, and your food intolerances. Explain why this digestion piece is so important.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

The mechanism of H. Pylori is that it damages the parietal cells and the stomach, and those are the cells that help you secrete HDL, which is your hydrochloric acid. When that domino effect is not working properly, meaning you have this infection, which 51% of the world population has, but your levels are too high when that HDL is too low, it essentially turns off the whole domino effect of everything else working properly, meaning your pancreas gets the signal to help start producing enzymes. All of a sudden, you go from a person who could eat anything to a person who cannot eat anything without bloating, burping, gas, etc. If we see and hear those symptoms, oftentimes we are going to see issues with sciatic nerves being elevated and elastics being low. Now, I do not have this woman’s protocol in front of me, but I can assure you she had to be on some acid and enzymes.

There is no way that her gut picture looks that bad, but yet her last days were amazing and her steatocrit was nothing. If I had her supplement list in front of us, we would probably see she had an acid or enzyme formula in there. Also, the glucuronidase looked great. Surprising. Maybe this woman had some hormone support formula that maybe had some calcium d-glucarate. Or something else in there to help lower this, because this should have looked worse. In most cases, it would have. Then, when you get down to the gluten antibodies, for example, the Anti TTg IgA, I love this test because I call it the lie detector.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Go back to the little girl because she wants the sky high. Let us show our audience that once again. This is a gluten-sensitivity marker. Let us unpack some misconceptions around this marker, because sometimes when people see it as normal, they think it is a hall pass to eat as much gluten as they want, but it is not so, so this Anti TTg IgA, I just point out that out there, hers was sky high at 354.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Yes, we tell in this case, the child’s parents, Hey. She has a problem with gluten. We cannot prove or say 100% that that is driving up the inflammation. We cannot prove or say that eating a piece of bagel is driving intestinal bleeding. But we can say it is not helping, and it is certainly driving this immune dysregulation. In her case, if she gets off gluten and is away from it for a good 3 to 6 months, hopefully, this will all self-correct, and then, of course, the protocol we are using to fix all the other gut issues will also self-correct. But this is what I call the gluten lie detector test because someone will say, I have not eaten gluten. like this says otherwise, are you sure? Then they go—yes, by the way, they went to a football party. I had some pizza and some wings. I did not think it was a big deal. Well, maybe you got away with it, but overall, your immune system does not like it, so it does not do it. There are so many good alternatives now that it is not that hard to get rid of.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Let us talk about when it is low. The Anti TTg IgA at 98, let us say, is normal. My take on this is that you can have a false negative. It is more likely to be a false negative than a false positive on this. I tell people that we are in the early stages of supporting our health, immune system, and gut, like getting the gluten out, even if you are Anti TTg IgA is normal.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Yes. I talked to one of my very first interviews over a decade ago with a guy named Dr. Rodney Ford. He is a pediatric gastroenterologist. Awesome dude. He said that eating a little bit of gluten was like being a little bit pregnant. Either you are or you are not on it. I like that because some people can do it. That cheat meal thing, 80/20 rule, whatever. But if you are someone who has been chronically ill and you want to get better, here is the truth. Now, this test did not show zonulin, but what Dr. Ford and I discussed was that even if someone who maybe does not have gluten antibodies shows up, it is likely that this gluten in protein is still going to elevate zonulin and potentially causes intestinal permeability, a.k.a. leaky gut, even if there was not an IG response here. Overall, I just think it is not worth it.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes, it is not. Then can you. I want to just comment on Zonulin now. I tend to not run on zonulin because there is so much data on this test that points towards a leaky gut, and zonulin can be falsely negative and give people a false sense of security. I do not love a zonulin test just because its accuracy is not great. We want the test to be meaningful for people. We can look through that and see that your Akkermansia is low. This means probably the leaky gut is there your calprotectin is high and your immunoglobulins are low, like leaky gut is here even if the zonulin want does not say so. Just what is your take on that?

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Well, you just saw my test report, so I am not running it.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes, I know. I get people who are like, Why don’t you run that? I want that. I am like, Well if you want to spend the extra money, it is not going to change what I recommend for you. If a test does not change the outcome of my recommendations, why should we spend the money on it?

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Agreed. Yes, I do not run it. If they beg us, I will do it, and I will look at it. I am like, That is interesting.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

But it is something a lot of, and there is not a lot you can do with it. It is funny. It is like, well, maybe it will listen to a podcast or something, and they heard, I should do this test, and yes. Glad we are talking about all this. Let us shift in the next few minutes. We have a few more minutes, so okay?

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Let us do it.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Let us talk about some solutions here. We unpacked this test and showed what is happening here, and this has been eye-opening for people. I am sure people are like, I want to get a test and see what is happening. I work with a practitioner who knows how to interpret it and help you, but what are some things that our audience can do now to start solving this, even if they do not have a gut test like that?

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Well, I have tested thousands of people, and I talked with Mosaic, who bought Great Plains. I talked to them the other day, and worldwide, I am in the Top 10 of practitioners running the most labs, and I am only dominions like two and a half or three days a week. If I were working full-time, I would probably smoke the numbers. But I do not say that to toot my horn. I just want to say that I have seen thousands of these reports, and I can tell you with confidence that anyone who has an issue with mood, energy, sex drive, sleep, skin, or gut.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Brain.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Yes, brain. They likely have some particular blend of yeast and fungal-bacterial gut inflammation-type issues that we have shown you today. Therefore, in some cases, if the budget does not permit or I have clients in the jungle in Ecuador and we have to deliver supplements on a donkey one time like the last-mile delivery was on a donkey up. In those cases where it is difficult logistically to get labs to and from, I have had enough experience, protocol-wise, that I feel comfortable just throwing people on a protocol.

I do not want to turn this into an Evan Brand’s supplement company sales pitch, but I do have specific microbiome support formulas that people can mimic and you can replicate, and you could look for other professional brands that you like and you could mimic some of that. But for example, I have a formula that we use called Microbiome Support-1, which we use a lot. In the case of Paloma, the little girl, you would want to look for a blend like this. You do not have to get mine. There are a million blends like this, but you could get something like this, which would have a combination of mastic gum to help with age, deglycyrrhizinated licorice, some clove and berberine, some barberry, some Oregon grapes, and wild indigo. You could run something like this for two or three months, and you could make a huge dent. 

If it was more of a yeast or a fungal problem. We are going to come in with a different approach. We are going to go more for poly ortho, olive horsetail, and French tarragon root. This is going to be more like a yeast solver. Then you can throw in specific probiotics. I have a blend. It is a low-histamine blend. I interviewed Tanya Dempsey. She is like the mast cell doctor guru, and I had her review some specific probiotic strains that I use, and she said, Yes, that would be like a mast cell histamine intolerance-approved blend. 

By using lower histamine strains of beneficial microbes using herbal antimicrobials and antifungals and helping things to support lymph, whether this is a red root, you might use things to help the spleen as well. You may be using some binders like I love using a blend of zeolite and charcoal fulvic minerals. You can get people better even without lab testing. Often, I am stacking in extra liver support. It could be medicinal mushrooms; it could be adaptogenic herbs if they are in a real funk. We may throw in some albuterol, and we may throw in some cordyceps to help them get up on their feet again. 

Lately, because of the issues we are seeing with long-term COVID, there is some cool science coming out on even using nicotine to help these people out of the hole. We are using nicotine patches now to help clear out the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, where the spike protein is getting stuck. All of a sudden, these people who were in a state of brain fog where they could not even keep up with their supplements can now focus again. It is an art that you are pulling these pieces for this body part. This piece is for that body part, and people can feel better within realistically a few weeks. But you could change your life in six months.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

We absolutely can. This has been so wonderful. I am so glad we pulled up some labs and looked at them. Let our audience know. Evan, where they can find you?

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Sure. My website, evanbrand.com, is the hub for everything. If you want to find the podcast, it is all free. If you want to find training courses or if you want to take your health into your own hands, you want to see more of this geeky stuff. You want to learn the before, the after, and the protocols. How do we fix people? Then you can check out the courses like My Better Belly, which Laura recommends. She purchased it. She uses it for her staff. That is incredible. If you want to learn this stuff, please take advantage of that.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

If you are a practitioner and you want to do a deep dive into how to interpret gut the way that Evan and I just showed you, this is a great course, so definitely get access to it.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

One of my favorite students is a woman named Dr. Judy, who is a pharmacist who has a functional medicine practice now. She has ditched conventional pharmacy. She is a 100% functional medicine, and she is like, so booked up. She cannot keep up now because she took the course, got confident enough to make protocols, and is just killing it. So, yes, it is an incredible tool. Then also, do some limited coaching for health seekers and clients that need help. If you do need help, just reach out of my sight, and we will be happy to help.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

It is good. Evan, I love bringing you on. You have been on all my mats, all my big projects, and all my summits. You have always had a featured speaker. We love the way you teach. We love the way that you approach healing the body. I am just so grateful that you are always willing to come in support and be a part of the movement that we are all trying to create here in the world. There is not enough for Evan and me to go around everyone. We need more practitioners who know how to do this. Take Evan’s courses so that you can help your clients the way that we do. Any final words for our audience before we start, Evan?

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Well, it is always a pleasure to be with you, and you do get a Certificate of Completion to boost your ego a little bit. They could put it on their wall, like Better Belly Certification, so if they like that, that helps them feel more confident. But the truth is, the stuff we are teaching here is not rocket science. When you have done it a few thousand times or more, you can help so many people. Unfortunately, right now, as we are speaking, there is someone in a waiting room in a doctor’s office who is afraid. They are worried, and they could be nauseous, anxious, depressed, and ill. They are hoping that someone somewhere out there is going to give them the answer to fix them. But if it is in one of those seven-minute doctor’s appointments, it is not going to happen. 

A lot of my friends, you could scroll through my contact list, doctor, this doctor that got a lot of friends that are doctors, and they will agree there is not enough time in the conventional model to fix these types of chronic health issues that we are describing. If you end up with pathology, you have a tumor, you have got this, you broke the arm, and you need a new kidney. Amazing. But for this stuff, you need somebody who has walked the walk and can hold your hand through it. I think whether it is taking a course that Laura provides or someone else like me who has some information about this. Dive, for less than the cost of a new iPhone, you could change the whole trajectory of your life. You could potentially not use the word prevent, let us just say this. A lot of these things I showed you today are carcinogenic. If we can fix those things now, how does that change your future when you are 60, 70, 80, and beyond?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes. I love that you just mentioned the price of an iPhone. It is so amazing to me how people get hung up about this because it is not covered by health insurance; therefore, I am not going to do it. But they do not bat an eye and spend 1200 or 1500 dollars on the latest iPhone. It is unbelievable. I am glad you brought that up.

Evan Brand, CFMP, FNTP

Well, let me say this without turning it into a rant because I am sure we could go for longer. But in my head, I have been a minimalist for a long time and am just happy with less. My wife and I drove past the outlet mall during the Black Friday sale, and the line of traffic was so massive. I said to my wife as we drove by, I was like, Honey, do people still think they need this stuff? I have been in those stores, and there is nothing in there that is going to excite me, turn me on, make me feel happier, make me feel more content, or help my health. In fact, by going to hurt my health, you go into one of these stores with all these off-gassing chemicals and synthetic fibers. I am like, This has nothing to offer. I just hope that next year, when we drive past that, the line is smaller, and then there is a line for you and me. That is the real line we want. We want the line to be something that people are going to get passion, joy, contentment, fulfillment, and health. That is where I wish the demand in the focus of society would go.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Well, with that mike drop. Good. Thank you so much, Evan. We just love having you. Until next time, everyone. Take good care. Bye now.