Gut/Brain Axis and Help With the Holiday Foods

Intro and episode overview 0:00

Hey friends, welcome to the ExcemaKids podcast. I know you've watched your skin spiral after a stressful skin week of bad sleep, and let's be honest, a stretch of sugar and schedule chaos. And that's why this episode is going to be so timely for you. Today I'm talking with Gabe Doe. He's the founder of Good Brew, and he is going to walk us through the gut, brain, skin access in a way that finally makes it click. We are digging into why so many kids are showing up with eczema and sensory issues and anxiety and ADHD and sleep problems and how dysbiosis in the gut can literally manufacture stress chemistry in the body.

That is the stress and the difference between the soluble and insoluble fibers that we read about all the time and why the right kind of prebiotic support matters. And then simple realistic ways to start building resilience in your child's nervous system and skin. That's what we're all about here. We should be able to navigate this world, right? Even with the gluten and the sugar and the chemicals in it. And if you're listening in real time, this is airing right before Christmas, which means sugar and late nights and travel and grandparents and sneaking treats and...

You know, trying to hold it all together while secretly panicking about the player that usually hits right after. So here is the plan. From the inside, you can start layering in gut support like Good Brew, and Gabe is offering 10% off with the code eczemakids at goodbrew.com. I'll have that link in the show notes. And from the outside, keep protecting that barrier with the Skin Comfort Trio. The herbal oil, the comfort spray, and the tala cream, my kids still use them daily. You can grab it at ximakids.com.

And if you order now, you'll have it in time to fight those post-holiday sugar flares before New Year's. So we're not aiming for a perfect holiday. We're aiming for a kid who can get through the season with less itching and better sleep and a calmer nervous system. And a parent who isn't completely fried. And so let's dive into our conversation with Dave and start translating all this biology into real relief for you and your kiddo. Is your child struggling with itchy nights and endless flare ups?

I'm Andrea McHugh, mom of four and host of eczema kids. Here you'll find natural solutions that actually work so you can heal your child's eczema without steroids, without the overwhelm, and finally see calm, healthy skin again. Let's get into it. Well, Gabe, I'm so excited you're here. Parents that are listening today are carrying so much with the flares and the sleepless nights and the meltdowns and the food confusion and the pressure to fix everything without breaking themselves in the process.

And when we zoom out, it's just not just our kids. We're living in this moment where anxiety and burnout and just this deep sense of disconnection have become the norm, it feels like,

Gut microbiome, dysbiosis, and modern health 2:51

and we're still telling people, I just think more positively, like just cope better, just push through. And I love your work because I feel like it calls that out. You show us that so much of what we label as mental or emotional is actually biological and rooted in the gut and shaped by our environment and reinforced by the stressors of modern life that our bodies were never really designed for. So I just agree with you so much with the screens and the less sleep and the more antibiotics and the less nature these more processed everything less nourishment like parents today are listening because they're seeing all these ripple effects you know every day in their lives and the flare that shows up after a stressful week or just even a normal week that just feels like a stressful week and the child just becomes itchier and more reactive because their sleep is tanking and they're overwhelmed, you know, their sensory systems are overwhelmed.

All of that just kind of seems to come out of nowhere sometimes, like I know mine did when my kids were suffering from severe, severe eczema. So I'm just grateful that we get to have this conversation today because I think you give a really good perspective and you give parents hope and actual tools and we're looking to translate biology into real life relief today. So Gabe, welcome to the show. Thank you, Andrew. Thank you for the wonderful introduction. And yes, you're absolutely right. This is our health, whatever aspect we're looking at it, it's holistic.

We have to take care of all aspects of our body, all of our systems and the gut and the gut microbiome is very important aspect of that. And it all works together. And I think we'll have a great conversation. That's what it is, right? We just have to understand this holistic picture because, I mean, we focus in on eczema here and it's just, unfortunately, there's no silver bullet, right? Otherwise, we wouldn't be having these conversations. You have to holistically address everything that's going on in your family's and your child's life in order to reverse this.

And you say, we're living in a time where anxiety and burnout, disconnection, they're all on the rise and the gut is tied to all three. So what's the connection most people still miss about our modern lifestyle and how that is shaping our biology? There's many different ways to attack this question, but let's just start with a little bit of the history that we know of about the gut microbiome. And every generation since antibiotics became prevalent, so back around World War II, the gut microbiome has become less and less diverse.

And we inherit the microbiome from our mothers at birth. That's the colonizing microbes that we have mostly come from our mothers at birth and during breastfeeding. And it's a very important part of our human health. There's many aspects of human health. that are reliant on the microbiome. It's not just a secondary or tertiary aspect of our health. It is a central part of our health. You could say we would not be able to survive without a healthy microbiome of as many different aspects of the microbiome, but there's something that I'll just jump right into.

is that short chain fatty acids. Short chain fatty acids are produced by the microbiome exclusively. We get a little bit of them from our food, but the body does not produce any short chain fatty acids. And these short chain fatty acids provide 70% of the energy source for the cells in the digestive system. And then they circulate through the body to provide a very essential energy source for the cells throughout the body. And when we have a microbiome that's in dysbiosis, One of the things that's happening is we're not producing the short chain fatty acids.

So the cells in the body start to scavenge for other energy sources. And when they do that, we see a lot of metabolic issues with the cells themselves, you know, and similar in the way that we talk about sugar and insulin resistance. the lacking of these short chain fatty acids play a major role in poor cellular function. And all of these things can relate back to cascade of effects that could include things like, you know, skin conditions and eczema and those kinds of things. There's a lot more to it than that, but I thought I would just mention that that, as we live in this modern world, when they look at, say, they study the microbiome of many like tribal people and indigenous people and other parts of the world, they have much more diverse microbiomes today because they haven't been exposed to as much antibiotics, pesticides, preservatives, toxins that we have in our modern environment that are all impacting the gut in a very significant way.

And with that too, we started to talk about the things like you were saying with stress and there's a reciprocal relationship between the gut and stress and stress in the gut and how that also affects these many kinds of immune function responses such as eczema and other things as well. We know obviously with autistic children where something like eczema can be an extremely difficult situation if you have a combination of autism and eczema. One of the things they've shown very broadly with the population in general now but specifically been pretty well studied with autistic children is by adjusting the gut microbiome and it has a lot of benefits on anxiety and that sort of thing.

So it has a lot to do with mood regulation. And they've seen this with veterans and things and we'll talk about all of those as is, but I just wanted to kind of, you know, say this is where as a modern society is where we're kind of sitting with gut health and the gut microbiome as we've done many, many things to damage it and repairing it and feeling it is extremely important. Parents, are you exhausted from battling your child's eczema? You've tried the prescriptions, the creams, the elimination diets, and the flares keep coming back.

I'm Andrea McHugh, mama for and host of the eczema kids podcast. Two of my children suffered with severe eczema and I know the sleepless nights and the nonstop itching and the frustration of feeling like nothing works. That's why I created this podcast to share what actually does from natural solutions that calm the skin to practical everyday tips that make healing actually possible. You'll find hope, clarity, and a path forward here. Follow eXimaKids wherever you get your podcasts and head to eXimaKids.com for free recipes and resources to start your child's healing journey today.

Yeah, I mean, it's easy now to see how we got here, right? I mean, it could be argued this is just like the sickest generation of kids in history. And it's really sad to watch. I mean, that's why I do what I do is because it just breaks my heart, right? It's just like these kiddos just haven't been on this earth for very long. You know, like my third daughter, she just came out already with eczema, like already with an autoimmune condition, right? And as a parent, just kills you on the inside. But it's easy to understand, like how all of those deleterious influences, right, then affect your microbiome.

You're not creating those short-chain fatty acids. I have to say, ghee is like a mainstay in our protocol, right? So it helps your microbiome and create butyrate, like one of those essential short chain fatty acids that your microbiome needs to thrive. So what are some of those other things that you could start to incorporate as a mere mortal parent? Now we're already here, we're already past the dysbiosis, we're into the metabolic disorders, we're into the lackluster cellular function, we're now seeing this enormous immune response now in our child's eczema.

Now we're there. We know we need to address gut health. What are some things that you can do? Well, obviously there's certain things, and you're going to be well aware of this if you're starting to work on something like autoimmune disease and eczema, that's eliminating certain things from the diet. Even dairy products, especially cow dairy, I'm not like totally anti-dairy or anything like that. I eat dairy products or whatnot, but it is well known that as we age our bodies become so we know about lactose intolerance that's people just hear that term all the time but what people need to be very well aware of is that the western world europeans and americans we consume way more dairy especially unfermented dairy later in life than almost anywhere else in the world does and most of the world outside of like yogurt and cheese and that sort of thing people only use dairy for their children you know and we know that as this is well studied as we age our body starts to shut off its ability and that produce the enzymes that break down dairy.

So you want to look at dairy and of course sugars and carbohydrates that we have added so much of to the modern diet.

Diet, fiber, and prebiotics for gut support 11:24

Just look at the modern diet. I mean, people can go and try to do carnivore diets and completely keto diets and those sorts of things. They might very well work or something like eczema. I can't say, but what I can say is it's totally factual knowledge that we've added way more carbohydrates, sugars and dairy into our diets than would have traditionally have been in our diets. And many people have a difficult time handling those things, but certainly obviously with sugars. And that's also related to like another skin disease and that's acne.

So we know that acne is more prevalent in these societies that have much higher consumption of carbohydrates and dairy. That's not by accident. You know, there's reasons for why that is. So that's another skin condition. It's not eczema, but you really need to look at your diet and what you can eliminate from your diet and to have a more balanced diet. But then when it comes to specific things like feeding the microbiome, it's the right kinds of fiber. So a soluble fiber. particularly soluble fibers like we use in our product, inulin fiber.

That's the kind of fiber that the microbiome has fed on for millennia and has evolved to feed on. Whereas some of these other things that are sold on the market as fiber are really like wheat dextrins and corn dextrins and synthetic fibers. And they're really not prebiotics in the natural sense of the word prebiotic. In fact, you talk about like gluten intolerance or those sorts of things. So what they know genetically, there's a pretty low percentage of the population that has celiac disease, but gluten intolerance is something that most of us would experience with a certain level in increase in gluten.

Everybody would kind of have their own threshold for that. And then we talk about like the modern wheats that we have in the United States and how these drought tolerant crops and whatnot might actually, you know, increase our intolerance to something like gluten. But the reason why we know gluten, for example, is going to have some amount of intolerance is because the reason that wheat has gluten is as a way to keep us from eating it. So pests can eat a little bit of wheat, but when the pests eat too much wheat, it knocks them out, maybe even kills them.

So the gluten protein that's in wheat is in itself something there to protect it from being destroyed by insects. And so humans will at some level have some intolerance for that as well. So when you're adding fibers or prebiotics to your diet, make sure that they're ones that are naturally supportive of a healthy microbiome and not ones that just are sold on the market as being that way. Yeah. I mean, everything that we do, then when we prepare our food for our kids, right, we have to just make it digestible.

Like that's what you're talking about, right? It's like you can't just eat wheat, like if you go through the process of sourdough, right? That that makes it so it's digestible. And, you know, when you soak beans or things like that, right, and you pressure cook them, like you're removing the lactic, like that, all of that, right, is so you can ultimately digest these foods and extract the nutrients from their foods, like, which is the whole purpose of eating. And I would love for you to go into a little bit more about soluble fiber versus insoluble fiber and how to make that actually work for you.

Because like a lot of these kids are also, of course, you know, which makes sense dealing with constipation a lot and things like that. And those are some terms that you hear thrown around. And so could you go into your products a little bit more and then also like distinguish those two things so parents know what to look out for. Yeah, so insoluble fiber would be kind of the type of fibers that would add bulk to your digestive system. Basically means they're not soluble by water and water makes up a major component of our digestive processes.

And so that would be like, you know, vegetables and things of that nature. Then there's some insoluble fibers that are sold on the market like psyllium husk. They've been sold for a long time as an insoluble fiber, and if it works for people, that's fine, but we wouldn't naturally be eating psyllium husk. So psyllium husk is not something that would really be a natural part of a normal diet, like say eating lettuce would be, which is also an insoluble fiber. those things add bulk to your stool, they'll add bulk to that, and they'll also help hold and retain water in the digestive system, which could be beneficial.

Those are insoluble fibers, and soluble fibers are soluble by water, and anything can really be labeled as a fiber if it's not digestible by the body's normal enzymatic processes and those sorts of things. But the soluble fibers that are really natural or the biggest ones would be inulin fiber. And that's the type of fiber that's found in fruits. And now they do make inulin. That's like a manufactured type of inulin that's was developed for the food industry. And some people are selling that as a prebiotic fiber, but that's a little different if that's not as well known that that's really truly a good source of fiber for what we're trying to do in terms of feeding the microbiome.

But the short-chain inulins that we get in fruits and that sorts of things, that is what feeds the microbiome in a healthy way. And it's that fiber that allows the microbiome to process and produce the metabolites that we were talking about, the short-chain fatty acids and others that are so essential for energy production. But in doing that, and this is also could be very much related to the immune system, system and immune response is B vitamins. So the insoluble fiber feeding the probiotics has a lot to do with things related to nutrient absorption and these metabolites that include B vitamins.

So we know B vitamins play a major role in the nervous system and in cellular function and that sort of thing. So both in extracting B vitamins from the food that we're eating, but also they produce B vitamins. They actually manufacture B vitamins. and other nutrients for that matter. So the way that we can absorb calcium and magnesium, that has a lot to do with both the probiotics and the fiber. So the foods that we eat can bind up calcium. And calcium is like the most important mineral. It's not just for bone strength, but all the neurotransmitters in the body rely on calcium channels.

So calcium is this critical element in the body and our body has multiple, because it's so important, it has multiple ways to uptake calcium. But we know, like say for example, vitamin D is a huge component of being able to uptake calcium, which also could play a major role in skin health and every other function of the eye health and everything else. But what we also know is that there's research showing that why do people in northern latitudes continue to be able to make use of calcium, even though they're not getting sunlight for a good portion of the year.

And what they're seeing is that the microbiome is picking up that role. So the microbiome, a healthy microbiome can also help us process calcium in a way and to allow our bodies to absorb it. In other words, taking over the role from the vitamin D. They're also seeing that the microbiome itself can produce vitamin D. So all of these things are very important to skin health and eye health and every organ health in general and brain health all the way around. So there's a really important connection between all of these things.

And then we get into like the stress and the stress response and the reciprocal nature of the gut health and stress. So when we're under more stress, that takes energy away from the gut. When we have a healthy gut, it adds more resilience to stress. There's a lot of research behind that. Maybe we can talk about it just a little bit more in a minute, but that correlation between the gut microbiome And stress and stress in the gut microbiome is very important because we know that stress kicks off a lot of these immune responses, you know, and eczema and things like that tend to get worse when we're under stress and feeling stressed.

But it also is important to keep in mind that a healthy gut helps to reduce stress, largely related to some of the things we've talked about, like the short chain fatty acids and these sorts of things, but also because the gut, 90% of serotonin is produced in the gut. When I think about serotonin produced in the brain, 90% of serotonin is produced in the gut and serotonin does more than just the feel-good molecule that we think of in the brain, but it's a very important neurotransmitter that signals to the gut how to when to move and process the nutrients that are in our digestive system.

So it's a signaling mechanism for gut utility and moving things through the gut. And which also has a lot to do with maintaining a healthy gut mucosal lining. And that's when we started to talk about leaky gut and things getting outside of the gut that start to produce these inflammatory responses and including, you know, digesting proteins properly. So the gut microbiome in a healthy gut plays a huge role in breaking down proteins into these amino acids and peptides. And if we don't break those amino acids and peptides down or the proteins down into amino acids and peptides, which is done largely by enzymes and by the microbiome, We start to have the potential for these proteins going outside of the digestive system with the lipids that we're eating and going into the lymphatic system rather than going through the cardiovascular system to the liver.

It ends up with the fats and lipids in the lymphatic system. and as whole proteins the body sees those as foreign invaders and creates a lot of antigens against those proteins which then also causes a cascade of inflammatory responses in addition to skin conditions but things like you know arthritis and many other much more severe chronic issues and even being

Stress, serotonin, and the gut-brain axis 21:00

related to dementia and mental health and cognitive function and all those sorts of things. So with that and back to the serotonin, there's also another hormone called corticotropin release factor that's produced in the brain and that regulates cortisol production. But we also know that it's produced in the gut and it's produced in the gut by the same cells that produce serotonin. So you get a double whammy. We know that a healthy microbiome plays a major role in signaling to the gut and the cells in the gut that produce serotonin and this corticotropin factor to produce the right amounts to regulate the production of the serotonin and the corticotropin factor.

The gut microbiome itself also produces and metabolizes certain neurotransmitters directly. That plays a big role in regulating these things. And so when things get off in the gut, we get into dysbiosis. We produce less of the serotonin. It gets out dysregulated. So we're producing less of the serotonin and more of the corticotropin factor, which means we're producing more of the cortisol, which ultimately more cortisol, more stress, heightened anxiety, and that sort of thing. Things that should serve humans in a short period of time under very direct type of stress, but it shouldn't be chronic.

type of stress. And in this modern world, we start to experience chronic stress. But then if the gut's out of dysbiosis, we start to manufacture stress. We start to manufacture the chemistry in the body that signals stress. And so there might not even be a source of the stress other than the fact that there's dysbiosis in the gut. And as you know, the gut is often called the second brain. And that's for good reason. There's a number of neurons in the gut that are comparable to the number of neurons that are in the brain.

between the connection between the gut and the brain, they think that about 70% of the communication is going from the gut to the brain rather than about 30% from the brain to the gut. And so this is tremendous impact on how we feel, how we act and how we behave. And when we get under stress, one of the things that happens is that they think that the central nervous system starts to demand more energy so it tells the gut to shut down to give it more energy and that's where we then start to have dysregulation in how we're processing food and nutrients whether we're eliminating it too fast or we're getting constipated whatever the guts just says the job we need to give all of our energy sources to the brain but if you have a healthy gut to begin with That means that you're going to have a much higher saline before you hit the saline with stress and these sorts of things if you're already starting from a good point.

And this study was really interesting in the fact that it's related to the serotonin and corticotropin factors stress because I've seen that they started to see a lot of this correlation with veterans with PTSD. With Vietnam vets, for example, they think that Agent Orange was disrupting the gut microbiome. So not only are they seeing treating people and veterans with PTSD with trying to change their gut microbiome and kill the microbiome as a way to help them with the results of PTSD, but what they're also have seen now is that they think that when two people experience a traumatic event, the one that has a healthier gut microbiome because of the right levels of these neurotransmitters in the body and in the gut, they're more resilient to that trauma and they can process that trauma better.

So there's this one theory that why so many Vietnam veterans ended up with PTSD was because they started with a bad dysbiosis of gut microbiome at the time they experienced the trauma and therefore they weren't in a state to be able to process that trauma correctly because they already had elevated levels of cortisol and these sorts of things and low levels of serotonin at the time they experienced the trauma. So this goes on for us as all humans. It's just a great case study, but if you, you know, dealing with something like eczema, is a form of trauma.

I mean it becomes or for an adult it could be anything like acid reflux and GERD which we hear a lot of testimonials about that too. But when your body becomes under attack from some sort of chronic health issue that in and of itself starts to create a long-term stress response and in itself is like ongoing trauma, right? So we want to be healthy in our guts, not just because it's helping us to process food and absorb nutrients and all these things, but because of this holistic effect that it's having throughout the nervous system, which may now allow us to be more resilient to whatever is affecting us, whether it's eczema or anything else, and then maybe give us a more runway to work towards a healing process you know to that issue so it all works together right it's reciprocal you know athletes would tell you kind of the same thing you know once you get injured in the middle of a season you know it's very hard to come back from that injury because you keep trying you know to play through the injury right it's a lot easier to recover from the injury in the offseason when you have some time off but you can kind of think about just We're in the game every day.

There's never a day we're not in the game. So if we can do things to give us some relief from that chronic stress and whatnot, it also gives us more time to find a full on solution to whatever the health issue is. That was awesome. You just gave us a gut brain access like master class. That was so, so good. And I mean, that's what, when I was in it with my kids and they were really suffering, what stressed me out more in all my research, it wasn't the eczema as much as like, oh my goodness, if we don't get this under control, what comes next, right?

Like more severe things. I mean, like many more autoimmune conditions and God forbid cancer, right? If you don't get this under control and I remember reading, what's the book? Dr. Natasha Campbell's book, The Gaps Diet, okay? And which I think is just like required reading for any parent just to help your kids, you know. Navigate the world as it is today no matter what they have going on and you know, like she's saying like the eczema and autism things like that It's on the same spectrum. It's the exact same thing, right?

It just is like presenting itself that information is presenting itself in and manifesting in different ways and Yeah, they're just like so many things that you said like You know, I also used to stress like, oh no, my baby and my toddler, they're stressed. Like, and I'm stressed and what can I do to release the stress? But of course, we're not sleeping and all the things. And it's like, no, the dysbiosis is the stress. Like, it's not your poor parenting, right? It's like, yeah, there's a significant dysbiosis going on.

Yeah, there's a good, a good point to being made. It's, you know, I guess these things, you can't say they're proven, but we're looking at all these, you know, different potential, you know, causes for autism and why there's escalated so much in the modern world. Same thing with eczema, same thing with like all these allergies, peanut allergy, et cetera, on and on and on. But there's a good case to be made that it's related back to the gut. There's a good indication that whatever we're doing that's like the source of these problems, and it may be multiple sources, a lot of that is also related to the fact that we either already have like a less diverse microbiome or what those things are doing.

They are directly damaging the microbiome. or in another way to put it, that healing the microbiome can play a big role in alleviating or even healing a lot of these issues. And so the metabolites and the processes that the microbiome plays such a big role in as when the microbiome becomes disrupted, we get into dysbiosis. maybe as a result of some of these other factors, which also could be in the mother too, right? So because the child inherits this microbiome from the mother, so there could be things going on at the time.

We know what the cesarean section, for example, you have a much less diverse microbiome and then you see a lot of these kind of, so that's like a empirical way of looking at it. But with a C-section, the child doesn't pick up as much of the microbiome from the mother. And then you also see that correlated with a lot of these other kinds of like autoimmune diseases and things like that. Same thing with breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is a very important part of inheriting the microbiome from the mother.

So if for some reason or another the child's not breastfed, can't be breastfed, you'll see, you know, less diverse microbiome and some potential issues, you know, related to that as well. It's a complex set of things happening there, but we can do things. We can do things to help recover from that, you know. So what else can we do to increase our kids' resiliency? Besides, we're eliminating the foods, right? We're starting there. We've swapped the laundry detergent. That's usually number one. And then we're cutting out the foods and we're whittling that down.

Then what? Then what can we do for our kids? Yeah. So if you want to, you know, add, start adding something to your routine, that would be, you know, possibly a gut health product, like adding soluble fiber or probiotics, keep in mind certain things about probiotics that we buy off the shelf in capsule form. For example, they don't survive those types of probiotics. Typically don't survive very well on the shelf and they don't survive well through the stomach acid. So. That's why they try to put such a high CFU count in a lot of those products.

It's for them to both to survive on the shelf and survive through the stomach acid. But one of the interesting things that some people are doing is their culture and then yogurt and things that we buy in the store, they're all pasteurized. All the studies show that they're very low in any kind of, it's a good idea, but unless you're making your yogurt at home, you're probably not really getting a lot of surviving probiotics from eating yogurt and these products. But a lot of people are making their yogurts at home.

And one of the things you can do is you can take one of these strains that you buy off the shelf in a capsule form and you can put it in with the yogurt that you're making. And now you start to culture that probiotic in the yogurt itself. And now you have a lot higher count of that probiotic in the yogurt. And by eating it in the yogurt form, there's a much better chance that it will survive and survive through the stomach and get to the lower intestine, but you have to do that on a really regular basis to keep that because we're really working with this colonizing microbiome that we got from our mothers

Practical ways to support kids' resilience 31:00

at birth and so really those things can help adding more probiotics in that way. But what we really want to, I mean, mostly can do is try to eat a diet and to do things that will boost up the good microbes and push down on the bad microbes. So our stomach is the most acidic part of our digestive system, obviously, but our bodies produce that acid. Then as we go into the small intestine, that's a more neutral environment and a healthy small intestine. And then the healthy large intestine is back again to a more acidic environment, a lower pH, not as acidic as the stomach, but a lower pH.

But in the lower intestine, that environment is created by the microbiome itself. So when we have a healthy microbiome that's, you know, dominated by lactobacillus and bifidobacteria and acromansia, these sorts of things, it's producing and maintaining its own environment. And then once things get out of whack and get into dysbiosis, the pathogenic bacteria or the not so great bacteria or the ones that we should have in very small quantities produces an environment that has a higher pH, which then really drives down the ability of these other microbes to proliferate.

They might be there, but they're not really in the numbers that they should be. So if you add something like soluble fiber and a spore forming probiotic, which is in our product. Mother nature has really provided that as a way to help boost that colonizing microbiome that we got from our mother. So the spore forming probiotics. are found in nature in the soil and those sorts of things so in nature we would have gotten them into our diet you know through you know the hunter and gathering lifestyle you know digging up things and we would get these spore forming microbes that are transitory they're not colonizing they go in with the food that we're eating and then they go into the lower intestine where they bloom and they produce the metabolites that really support the rest of the microbiome, and then they're eliminated, and we keep replenishing those.

And because they're spore forming, the most important thing is that they survive stomach acid. They're not affected by the stomach and the spore, and obviously they blossom there. But you can also, in our product, use them. It makes it easy to use in lots of other food products too. So you could take something like our product where you have both the soluble fiber in the spore form and probiotic and you could put it in as your coffee drinker. I know kids probably aren't drinking too much coffee, but you could, you know, it'll actually will survive in the heat of a coffee or you can mix it into juice or you can put it into yogurt or you can put it into other foods, oatmeal that you're eating and make it a, you know, daily part of your routine.

And whereas in another, important point about taking probiotics in capsule form is the capsules aren't large enough to hold a significant amount of prebiotic fiber. So by using a product in the scoop, like our product, you can manage it to the amount that works for you because everybody's different. So some people might use a scoop might work for them. Some people might use two scoops, but also you can start slow and build up to whatever works for you. But by using it in a scoop, you get a significant amount of prebiotic fiber.

So you're actually getting enough fiber to actually act as a good prebiotic for your microbiome. So adding things like this to your diet might be something that you want to look at. You're doing everything right. You've cleaned up the diet, you've swapped out the soaps, you put air filters in every room, maybe even live on an organic farm. and still your child is scratching, bleeding, awake all night. The flares won't stop and no one can tell you why. No parent should have to watch their child suffer, especially when you're already doing everything in your power to fix it.

That's why I created the Eczema Kids podcast. I'm Andrea McHugh, mama for health coach and the founder of Eczema Kids. Two of my own children battled with relentless eczema and I know firsthand how heartbreaking and exhausting it is. Here we go beyond surface level fixes. You'll learn how to uncover hidden triggers Prepare your child's gut and calm their skin from the inside out. You'll hear the real stories of families who found freedom and insights from practitioners who are rewriting what's possible.

Because eczema isn't just a skin condition, it's a message from the body. And when you listen, you can heal. So follow eczema kits wherever you get your podcasts and start your child's healing journey today. Yeah, sounds simple enough. And I know it's a powder. Can you talk a little bit more about your product? Because everyone's leaning in now, like, oh, how can I incorporate this into my child's diet? Yeah, so our product is very simple. It's an organic inulin fiber, it's not a synthetic fiber, it's not a dextrin, it's none of these things.

No dairy, we don't use any processing aids, no preservatives. So it's the organic inulin fiber combined with the probiotic, spore-forming probiotic bacillus coagulans. The bacillus coagulans strain that we use has over 25 clinical studies behind it. many, what, 45 research papers on that strain specifically, and there's hundreds of papers on Bacillus coagulans in general as a species of probiotic. And so, yes, we have so many great testimonials for people with all kinds of issues, but dealing with specific digestive health issues.

A lot of people with acid reflux have actually told us how much it's helped them. People with chronic constipation, which all of these things are symptoms of dysbiosis. But we also have had people tell us that it's really helped them with their skin as well for a fact that the microbiome and skin health are related, just like every other aspect of the body. We have had few testimonials related to the skin itself. And one lady who we now work with on some things, she was having, now this is, I don't know how this works with children, child eczema or whatever, but she lives out in the Rocky Mountains where it's relatively dry.

And when she was going to her customers or clients on the coast up in the specific Northwest, she said her eczema would get really bad. So the change in climate and conditions was really affected her. And she told us that once she started using our product, that it made a tremendous difference. So there you go. I mean, it's just an example of really how the gut and skin affect one another. So yes, our product's really easy to use. You can use it by a scoop or two, put it in your food that you put it in your coffee.

It doesn't affect the flavor of anything. You won't taste it. It's organic. It's good brew, G-O-O-D, B-R-U dot com. So B-R-U and give it a try if you like. We'll put all that in the show notes, but yeah, I mean, you know, but that case study that you just talked about, right? You're treating like the upstream biology, right? Versus like these downstream symptoms. And that's what we're all getting at. And that's like the root of so many of these diseases and including eczema. I love what you're doing and I love your product.

And it's so fantastic. And I think a lot of the people, right? Like even the naturally minded people, right? If you're not doing the pharmaceuticals, we're still taking some supplements that are, that are extracts, right? And you're speaking to you know, how Inulin, you know, a lot of these products, you'll see Inulin on a lot of like health-focused brands' panels, but like that's not gonna do it, right? It's derived from something, it's like vitamin D or anything, like even if you're taking, you know, turmeric, so like you could take that, but it's like really stripped of like the actual whole herb right it's just that one small part of the extract and that's not gonna do the job like everything you know we talk about this so much here the skincare everything it has to be bioavailable which means it has to be recognizable by your body and it has to be digestible.

Yeah, it's really important just to try to keep out if when you're adding anything to your diet that's like supposed to some aspect of your health, whether it's like a supplement or a vitamin or whatever, you also want to be careful because you're not getting anything concentrated in with that that is a negative. And we've seen that a lot and say like the supplement industry. where people were taking a supplement, but then all of a sudden they go and study the supplement and it's high in heavy metals or something along those lines.

So I see the same thing in a different way when it comes to a lot of these gut health products where they're calling something a prebiotic or a fiber. That's really not something that we would normally get in nature as a true prebiotic or as a fiber. Or they're using things that would come from a GMO source or from a source that has a natural allergen or maybe pesticides or that kind of thing in it. Yeah. I know. You go down on the rabbit hole. It's like every single thing. I know a lot of people, they pay really close attention to the skincare ingredients.

Vitamin E a lot of times is just derived from soy and vegetable glycerin is like the things that they take from is a bit shocking, right? And then there's citric acid and everything that's just derived from straight up mold consuming sugar. And it's like, man, you really have to do diligence here. I can tell that you have, so thank you. Yeah, the gut microbiome is as unique to each individual as your thumbprint is. So even though you'll see a family has a much more similar microbiome to people that live further and further away, then you go around the world and people's microbiomes change with geographic location, it's still unique to you.

Yours is yours and we have more DNA in our bodies that are microbial and foreign than of our own. And also keep in mind that the skin also has its own microbiome, which is going to be a very interesting area of more and more research. One of the things they see with the microbiome of the skin microbiome is that a less diverse microbiome, whereas in the gut, you know, more diversity, assuming they're probiotic and they're good bacteria, is usually seen as a good thing. less diversity. So basically what that's probably saying is that as we live on this planet, we get exposed to more and more pathogens and they start to make homes on our body and now we have a difficult situation.

Also, if we have taken antibiotics and these sorts of things, we've disrupted the microbiome that's on our skin and then we're more, it's kind of like creating a petri dish on our skin, you know, for anything to take hold and then you start to get into all these antibiotic resistant bacteria and that kind of thing, which might be a really interesting aspect to eczema. It's just sort of looking at it as a side note is that the same thing that's disrupted the gut microbiome, the skin microbiome may have also been disrupted over generations because of antibiotics and toxins and pollutants and all these things.

Meaning, as a family, if you see eczema running in a family, for example, it may not be genetic. It might be a microbiome thing, which can include the microbiome that's on the skin. So I know that you're starting to see products with probiotics for the skin. And I think that's going to be more and more the case as we learn more about the skin microbiome. So there's actually a lot of aspects of things related to that, things that get chalked up to inheritance, like genetic inheritance. that I think is going to be and is already starting to be reversed as something that's truly genetic versus something that's got more to do with the microbiome

Good Brew product details and closing remarks 42:00

that we're inheriting and we're sharing with one another in these family environments. Absolutely, absolutely. But with the skin microbiome, you don't even have to look into skin probiotics. I just feel like if you just start with, don't put on the things that strip your microbiome. The same as eliminate the processed sugar and things like that from your diet. If you could just not use the stripping soaps and the alcohols and the parabens and all that, then just use Epsom salt baths and baking soda.

The pH and then You know, herbal oils is like a big part of our protocol too. And that's tied to a thriving skin microbiome. It's like the whole point of so many things that we do, right? It's just a. Yeah, I'm a big fan of castile soap. I started using that many years ago because I had some reactions probably to detergent or whatever. So I've been using that product for over 20 years. And when I did that, I started looking into what we were putting in our soaps. And I can tell you, if I go to a hotel or something and I don't have my own soap with me, it doesn't take very many I'm starting to have itchy skin and that kind of thing.

What we use to make soaps is ridiculous. It's the same thing with the case for pharmaceutical medicines, how there's some good in these things, but they become such a center for greed that we actually start to push out all of this knowledge that we have gained over thousands of years of survival as humans on this planet and just place it for something that is not as well proven or may actually have horrible side effects and disrupts all these other aspects of our health by making these synthetic drugs and things that we use.

It's the same thing with the soaps and you know, we're using some wild ingredients that we call soap to clean our skin. I know. But that's, I mean, I mean, and then we're back to where we started, right? How it's just like this holistic journey, right? You really, really have to understand how everything that is in your environment is affecting you and your microbiome, ultimately, which is really running the show, like our bacteria is what's running the show or lack thereof. And so If schools and pediatricians and family understood a little bit more about how the gut shapes skin and focus and behavior and sleep and ultimately resilience, like how we survive on this planet, what would you do differently?

Oh, wow. I mean, it's weird. It's weird because if you live amongst a certain group of people, work amongst a certain group of people like I do, I could be way overly optimistic because I'm around people all the time that think like you think and think like I think and think like, you know, that, you know, basically, you know, it's not that hard. Just look at things that haven't been normally used in our foods and in our way that we treat our skin, things that aren't really coming from nature in a way that would have happened over thousands of years when we start to over rely on synthetics and that kind of thing.

So just be aware that we don't have to use all of these things in our diet and in our daily lives, but also to listen to their body. our bodies give us signals, our bodies tell us things and some people are going to be more sensitive than other people to these things as well. So, you know, try to listen to your body and listen to what it's telling you and it removes things from your diet and cut back on things. And one of the things with filling your gut, for example, is a lot of times people are experiencing say what they call triggers, triggers to this or that or the other.

It can be that you might need to totally eliminate those things, but Oftentimes when people heal, they can now with a reasonable amount add those things back into their diet. Say like tomatoes is one that's a real example. A lot of people have issues with tomatoes, especially uncooked tomatoes. They are inflammatory. We know they're inflammatory. We know that they, especially uncooked tomatoes with the seeds, you know, can be a trigger for acid reflux or for gout and for these other things. But a lot of times when people heal, they don't have a problem eating a few tomatoes.

So what was really the cause? Was it the tomatoes or was it something that was not allowing us to properly process the tomatoes? The same thing like we were talking about with the gluten. Most people should be able to tolerate some amount of gluten, but you don't want too much of it and you may be getting a very resistant kind of it in modern wheat. And so you need to listen to yourself and to see how that goes. So I guess if I was really dealing with an issue like eczema, I would be taking notes.

I would really be taking a lot of notes. I would, you know, a lot of things I think you could just cast out, like just, okay, we don't need this in our diet. We know we don't need all this high fructose corn syrup or this extra sugar and all these extra carbohydrates and maybe not so much dairy and a lot of these things that we could just start right off the bat with. But I think if we take notes, if we record things, if we use like the elimination diet approach and use elimination, One of the other aspects of our health as well, you know, that's all going to really help us understand ourselves.

I guess there's a lot there. We can talk about it for a lot of time, just sort of, you know, just trying to go it off in different directions on that. I know. We're going to have to do a part two because I want to respect your five. Where can everybody find, follow, get some good brew? Where can they connect with you? Yeah, the best place is just to go to the website, goodbrews, spelled B-R-U dot com. So G-O-O-D-B-R-U dot com. And if you're listening to this around the Christmas season, I don't know, you know, you can use the promo code Merry Christmas to get an extra discount.

We've got three Christmas specials on the website right now. And we'll usually have, most of the time we'll have some, some special, but right now we have three. They're like a, by and large, you get a pretty small, uh, we have a deal for two mediums and we have a deal for three smalls. A lot of people like the small size because they, Hey, give them a chance to try the product, but they can also travel with that size. But yeah, we have some specials you can use. Merry Christmas. It's that time, but yeah, good group G O D B R U.com.

So. Perfect. Thank you so much for your time today, Gabe. That was so insightful. Thank you. Thank you, Andrea. Take care. Okay, how good was that? I hope you're walking away from this episode feeling less broken and more informed because, as Gabe explained, so much of what looks like mood or behavior or random flares is actually biology, the short chain fatty acids, gut diversity, stress chemistry, and a microbiome that's either working for your child or against them. And here's what I want you to remember.

Your child is not fragile, their gut and nervous system and their inflammation buckets are overful and overwhelmed. And eczema, anxiety, and sleep issues, they're all different branches of that exact same tree. So when you support the gut and you protect the skin barrier, you're not just chasing symptoms, you're changing the trajectory. If you want to start layering in the gut support we talked about today, You can try Good Brew. It's an organic, inulin-based prebiotic with spore-forming probiotics that's easy to slip into foods and drinks.

You can grab it at goodbrew.com. That's G-O-O-D-B-R-U.com. And don't forget to use the code EXIMAKIDS for 10% off as a thank you for being a part of this community. And while you're working on the inside, keep supporting the skin from the outside with the Skin Comfort Trio over at eczemakids.com. If you're catching this around Christmas, there is still time to get in the house before the post-holiday sugar flares show up for New Year's. So we're not scrambling with cracked, itchy skin on January 1st.

You are not crazy, you're not overreacting and you're absolutely not alone in this. You're learning how your child's body actually works and that makes you so powerful. I am cheering you on and I will catch you next week. Take care friends. Thank you for helping with my eczema. Love you. Thank you for listening today, friend. I know healing your child's skin isn't easy, but you're doing it one smart step at a time. If this episode gave you a little hope or a better night's sleep, leave a quick review so more exhausted parents can find eczema kids and finally rest easy too.

Follow, share, and let's help more kids heal. Take care.