How To Retrain A Broken Gut-Immune System

Introduction and Guest Background 0:00

Welcome to the conquering Chronic Inflammation Summit. I'm your host, Doctor David Jokers. And today I have the honor of interviewing Steve Wright. He is a health engineer, functional medicine expert, and the visionary founder of the Healthy Gut Company, which exists to help people get transformational results with their gut health issues. The suite of products he's created, A Healthy Gut, are some of the most innovative and powerful gut health supplements in the world, resulting in more than 12,000 satisfied customers and more than 1000 tough cases helped.

The company is trusted by more than 150 practitioners and provides a customer experience unlike any other by staffing their entire support force with gut health coaches. Additionally, Steve has become a renowned voice in the gut health space, personally creating more than 30 industry leading educational programs and contributing to over 700 research articles. You can find his website, healthy gut.com. And today we're talking about how to retrain a broken gut immune system. So you guys are really in for a treat here.

Without further ado, let's go into the interview. Well. Hey Steve, great to connect again. I always enjoy our conversations. And today of course, we're talking about how to retrain a broken gut immune system. And so let's talk about the immune system. Right? A lot of people ask things like where is the immune system in our body? Where are the organs, you know, or where where is it located? And why is it why, why are so many people having immune system problems today? Yeah. Well, thanks for having me back.

And, it's a really important question because it's kind of core to every other disease. Like, you know, everything else we want out of life, whether we want to be skinny or have a good brain or have a good gut immune system, kind of the communication pathway for all those systems. And so, the location question, I like to think in visual terms,

Immune System Location and Gut Connection 2:00

and I didn't play a ton of video games, but the video games I did play, I always liked it when you could build your own character and you can kind of assign different values. And if you were building a human body and you were assigning the immune system to, like various parts of the human body, roughly 70 to 80% of all your immune points or whatever, or your immune cells, they'd be located in and around your intestines. So it really is kind of packed into your abdomen, packed into your gut. But then, of course, it reaches out everywhere, reaches out to the ends of your, you know, the the parts of your brain, your eyes, all the way down to your toes.

So it's kind of everywhere. But the the central mass of our immune system is in and around our gut. And that's because there's really amazing, interplay between the outside world, our gut microbiome, and then the immune system. And it's that connection that I think it's getting a lot of, you know, just a lot of play these days. Because what we saw from the pandemic was a strong immune system, which is what I used to say, like, I would hey, it caught me in the camp. Who wants a strong immune system?

What we found is that that methodology, that ideology didn't really work because a lot of people died from too strong of an immune system. And so what I think we're starting to appreciate is the complexity of the immune system, the complexity of the gut immune connection. And I think that opens a new door to being healthier, you know, having the things that we've always wanted from our immune systems that maybe we haven't been getting the last ten, 20 years. Yeah, that makes sense. And so those mucosal membranes, wherever there's mucus, there's going to be immune components in there.

And so goes into your respiratory system. Sinuses, you know, all those types of things. But most of that is in the gut like you were talking about. And so the gut plays such a critical role here. Now in our society today, we see that more people are inflamed. And I know you guys, you know, your team specializes in working with a lot of tough cases. I know I've worked with many tough cases over the years, and most of these people are already making a lot of nutrition changes, removing toxins. They're using, you know, essential oils.

They've got air purifiers, they've got it all, and they're still struggling with chronic inflammation. So let's talk about that. Yeah. Well I think we have learned like our industry. And I think the awareness to health has come a long ways over the last 10 to 20 years. But in the last ten years there's just been extreme focus on removing the bad things, you know, removing the inflammatory foods, removing the inflammatory particles from the air, things like that. That I think is an important that's important knowledge to gain.

But what we find is what you're alluding to is, people who have gone to very intense lengths to remove the toxins in order to be living an anti-inflammatory life, only to be seemingly more reactive than ever, more right at the edge of inflammation overload than ever. And so what I kind of had started seeing the last couple of years was like, man, maybe this idea of eliminating more and more foods, eliminating more and more things isn't necessarily the only component to the equation to basically producing a resilient human who is in a state of anti-inflammatory rather than a state of just almost ready to be in a total inflammatory meltdown.

And so, I think we need to move the conversation forward and not there's nothing wrong like I have air purifiers, you know, we have I try to avoid the the nastiest of the nasty foods. But I do think we need to now go from trying to live these perfect bubble lives inside of glass containers where we're never cross contaminated with mold or gluten or something else. And we need to move the paradigm to, how do we create a resilient human body in the face of all the toxins in the world, all the Wi-Fi in the world, all the light pollution in the world?

And I think the answer is actually in the gut, and it's in this immune system interplay. And I think we're starting to actually develop tools now that can restore that balance and actually move a human who's just eliminating, eliminate eliminating and just getting kind of worse and more fragile to resilience. Back to, you know, health is not maybe their number one concern. Every day. Yeah, that makes sense. We want to create resilience. And so all these little stressors they shouldn't overload our body.

Why Chronic Inflammation Persists 6:30

In fact they actually can actually help us become stronger and more resilient. But we've got to be able to adapt to them. And so I think that's really the key. So let's talk about let's talk more about the gut and the role the gut plays in overall immune function and immune balance. Yeah. So inside of especially in the small intestine where a lot of activity is happening, you alluded to the fact that you have all these kind of layers in there. And the mucosal layer is extraordinarily important because right behind me, coastal layer is this one layer of cells.

And these gut cells are a bunch of different specialty immune cells. And these immune cells are doing very complex, procedures every single day, like all seconds of the day. Sometimes some of the cells are actually reaching out into the mucus and into the microbiome, and they're grabbing things and they're saying, hey, let's sample this. Almost like a scientist who's trying to look at what's in their water or something, and they're saying, what's going on out there? Other cells are taking information, sometimes cytokines, information in, and they're saying, okay, let's release some antimicrobial peptides to kill certain types of bacteria or call the microbiome in certain ways.

Other cells are releasing messages from those sampling practices out to the rest of the body. Say, hey, we got this thing going on over here. It's inflammatory, it's anti-inflammatory. Be ready. So this is very, crazy and cool and complex interplay that's happening all day long inside of the gut. And when you are in a state where your gut is more broken down and, you know, I don't think we need to talk a ton about what that looks like. Like, if you literally if you're not pooping well, if you're not feeling well, if you can't eat the food you want to eat.

And I'm talking about real foods, I'm not talking about obviously, like Crisco and seed oils and things like that. But if you can't eat the normal foods, those are all signs that you have a broken down gut. And, probably you have some sort of microbiome issue, probably some sort of mucus issue, maybe some sort of leaky gut issue. And that that story has gotten a lot of attention lately. But what hasn't gotten a lot of attention is what happens to the immune system when we get into those states. And I think that's the the opening or the possibility here to really restore people's immune systems, to tolerance to the world.

Yeah, let's let's go into more about that. So I've been talking about it like kind of like tolerance and I would say like, tolerance to our outside world. So like if you're in a body that can't do seasonal, pollen bloom, right? You have seasonal allergies even a little bit like, you take a little Claritin and you're like, that's not that big of a deal. Well, actually, it is a pretty good red flag. It's a it's an extraordinary red flag. If you're a practitioner, you're like, oh, okay, I know that person.

That person's got a, immune system that's not quite balanced. If you're having, reactions to normal foods, if you're, having extreme reactions to mold and other sort of things that are floating around the air, these are all signs that your immune system has lost its tolerance to the world. And when this happens, it starts to develop its own sort of like systems and processes that are like a little broken in how it responds to the world. It's almost as if, you got a shoulder injury, like a real shoulder issue.

You would seek out multiple people to help you with that, right? Because you would need someone maybe to surgically repair it. You would need rehab exercises. You may need manual manipulation from a chiropractor to get everything, because in the process of harming your shoulder, you you still had to eat. You saw to brush your teeth, you still did take care of the kids. And so you develop these compensatory pathways in your shoulder that you now have to unwind when you go through rehab and you actually get back to a healthy shoulder.

The gut is in the gut. Immune system is very similar in that it develops compensatory pathways to keep us alive, to keep us doing the best we can do every day with what's happening. And if we don't start to re like rehab it like do the tolerance, pathways it's going to stay in these sort of locked in pathways that might be more inflammatory than is necessary for the situation, especially if you've been listening to your show, reading your books, doing all the work. But you're like, why am I still so inflamed?

Well, your body might not remember the other way, which is the other anti-inflammatory way. Yeah, it's really interesting. And obviously you know the body's immune system is hard wired to try to protect us from something killing us quickly. So you know our ancestors throughout the history of mankind, most of them were dying from infections that got into the blood from like a flesh wound or whatever would spread wildly, get into the lungs, caused pneumonia or the nervous system, and cause meningitis or encephalitis and kill us quickly.

So inflammation is there to stop that. But the thing is, we've got to obviously turn off the influx of, you know, potential pathogens or pathogenic pathogenic ways

Gut Immune Tolerance and Leaky Gut 11:30

getting into the getting into the bloodstream, triggering that alarm, and causing the immune system to be aggravated. And when we have a leaky gut, we constantly have, you know, bacterial waste, right? Large, undigested food particles, things like that, getting into the bloodstream, turning on that alarm. So how does that impact what you're talking about here? Yeah. So, it's it's, you know, it's right on. Right. Number one, if you have a, like a leaky boat or whatever, like you do need to stop the water from coming in.

So we do need to do the work to heal up a leaky gut, to rebuild those mucosal membranes, to rebuild the microbiome so that we stop the body from being inundated from even normal things, like, you know, now we have people that are reacting to kale and strawberries and chicken and like. And it's because their, gut layers have broken down so much that these normal daily things are going through. And then, of course, you have your your toxins, right, your LPs toxins, lipopolysaccharide, toxins, which are there in your oral microbiome.

They're in your stomach, they're in your intestines like yours. No life without LPs. But there are the body is not a fragile thing. This is a miraculous thing. With all these layers, like the immune system has so many layers of complexity and the gut has at least five. But there's sublayers inside there. And when it starts getting broken down, that's when these these fail sleeves kind of start, you know, failing essentially. And you get this constant, hum. It's almost like if someone was giving you like a, like a burn on your arm, they just kept poking you or touching your arm.

At some point your skin cells are going to get red, they're going to get inflamed, they're going to be pissed off. And that's kind of like what's happening inside your gut. If you don't have that thick mucosal membrane, if you don't have that microbiome, if you don't have the right oxygen, the, the the gut is just exposed to things. It shouldn't be exposed to. And that's just going to naturally create damage, inflammation, cytokines that are going to go out to the rest of the body saying, hey, we have a problem here.

Please bring resources we need to repair. We need to stop this. And so yeah, there's there's like I would say step one, which is what I think a lot of the elimination stuff over the last ten years has been focus on is like trying to reduce the the exposure or the potential to harm the gut. And I think we've made a lot of progress there. The the issue is though, if you if you're still experiencing those symptoms, maybe you haven't tried the new products that we have out there that can help repair those layers.

But then also, I find that if people don't address what happens after the gut barrier, you can still see these persistent loss of tolerance to normal things even after you do heal up your leaky gut. And I think that's the problem with, where people are thinking they're like, if I just get the gut healed, if I just stop the toxins from getting into my body like the bacteria, things like that, I'll be okay in my body will work fine. And I think what we're what I'm seeing is with the, you know, there's about, like, what, 88,000 new chemicals since the 1980s that have been released into our world.

There's the Wi-Fi, there's the light, there's all these things I don't know, as I don't know that our bodies are capable of just snapping back to healthy. If we remove and heal the gut, I think there's additional layers that we have to go to. Yeah, it makes sense. Basically like increasing the threshold or the resilient factor. So if, you know, let's say, you know, two grams of LPs, I mean, I'm sure it's a lot more, that's in the body, but let's just say two grams triggers a potent inflammatory response, a huge inflammatory response in the body.

We want to get your body resilient enough to where it takes ten grams of LPs to trigger that inflammatory response, rather than just saying, okay, we need to do everything we can to reduce the LPs, right? Which really can't because that's just going to come from bacterial waste. Or even if it was heavy metals or glyphosate. Right. So rather than saying, okay, if it's, you know, two grams of glyphosate, that's triggering a major inflammatory response in the body, let's get your body strong enough to wear two grams is no big deal, right.

And it's able to handle itself until you hit ten grams, right. So that way you can go out and live your life. And let's say it's, you know, your your, your load that you're being exposed to is roughly, you know, 2 to 5g, you know, just kind of cycling back and forth as your body's detoxing and what you're being exposed to, then you never hit that threshold. You never really have this major inflammatory response. And so you don't have any, any sort of major symptoms. Yeah. That's that's that is the goal.

I mean it's it's really similar to like going to the gym and you walk in the gym, you see these these people doing these big lifts or something. You're like, I can't even lift 5 pounds doing that. How can they lift 100? Well, if you work at it for a year or two, you know, you can catch up. You can be at 50, 60 pounds of capacity, and therefore everything else in life is easier because you build that capacity and that resilience is what you're talking about. And I think, I know that you're all about the inflammatory pathways.

And so I just want to pause on LPs for a second. I'm a big, believer in how do we get rid of LPs. And, what's fascinating to me is I don't know if you take curcumin every day, but I do. I take a little bit every day just because it's the studies on it are so ridiculously awesome.

LPs, Curcumin, and Gut Defense Layers 17:00

There's a lot of noise in the marketplace about what's the best curcumin? Should it be nano, should it be lipo? Should it be all these different things? And I've been digging deep into the gut components of LPs and the the number one way to detoxify LPs is actually strong stomach acid. The second way in your small intestine is something called intestinal alkaline phosphate taste. So IAP is basically an enzyme that like grabs LPs, inactivates it so that a bunch of other stuff can happen to get rid of it.

This is that different? That's different than the liver enzyme alkaline phosphatase or very some REKT. Yeah, yeah, they're similar, but but slightly different. So intestinal alkaline phosphatase, the I think the number one way that curcumin is actually helping us is it is the best studied way to boost your IAP production in your small intestine. And so yeah, so maybe the the anti-inflammatory effects, according to the research I've read, may not be happening systemically. They may be happening right in your gut by taking just regular 95% extract, skip the black pepper, skip all that stuff that might be, harmful to the gut, and just let the gut and the microbiome and the immune cells create more IAP in the presence of curcumin.

That grabs on to the LPs, and then it doesn't go into your body and it goes out into the toilet. It's a it's really cool. And it's I mean, for me, anyways, I'm like, why buy the super expensive stuff when the, the data is showing that at least, a lot of the potential benefit of curcumin might be happening right in the gut. Yeah, that's good to know. I think also, immunoglobulins can also be real helpful for reducing, LPs, but yeah, for a lot of LPs is driving up so much inflammation in the system.

Yeah. Yeah, that would be an awesome one. Two combo is is immunoglobulins and curcumin. Yeah that's great. Now let's talk about you mentioned five layers of the immune system. Can you can you break that down for us. Five layers of the gut. Of the gut. Yeah. Five layers of the gut. Yeah, yeah. So, we've been talking about a leaky gut. Like it's just these, you know, this one layer of cells that just gets broken apart by tight junctions and then. Oh, no, our body's broken and we're so fragile. And that's not the body.

The body is so resilient. And it's more like a castle, really. And so in the gut. According to a bunch of researchers, this is not necessarily like Stevens theory. This is me aggregating a bunch of researchers data and their their reports. We basically have these five layers of defense. First is the oxygen layer. So in the gut it's actually extraordinarily low oxygen. It's supposed to be low oxygen in the gut. All of the good bugs that we want are called anaerobic bacteria without oxygen bacteria.

It's it's almost like if you put us on the moon or Mars, like we need what we need to survive these bugs. If the oxygen content gets too high, they die. And so first step is we want the right oxygen environment. The next step is all those chemical messengers coming out from the insects. These are things like IAP. There's antimicrobial peptides. Secretary IGA is something that I'm sure you measure. And the clinic measures a lot on people. These are all molecules that our immune cells are sending out into the gut to call what's happening to defend us, to do all kinds of really cool stuff.

After that, you have the microbiome. You actually have the the species of bugs. We have, a microbiome in the small intestine. We have the majority of our microbiome is actually at the bottom of the small intestine and the top of the large intestine. So when people say the microbiome, it's not near the toilet, it's actually up in the middle of your body, right at the top of the large intestine. That's where the majority of it is. And then after that we have a mucus layer. So we have this. We really want, like you were saying earlier, like just like people think about mucus in their nose and how you want healthy mucosal separation from the maybe the bacteria in the air or something.

We want that same healthy separation between our microbiome and potential toxins and our gut cells. And so we have this mucus layer. And then we have the actual physical layer. And so I usually group those two together because they're kind of physical in nature. And then we have the immune layer behind that. And so those layers are all cross talking. They're all working together to compensate for each other, cover for each other. If somebody's tired that day or hurt that day or whatever. And, what you create is you, you create this really interesting.

I call it kind of like the ideal hippie community, like almost if you think like in the late 60s, the idyllic somebody is watching the kids, somebody fixing the house, somebody growing the food. Someone's, you know, doing the books. Like they go through specialized. Everyone's got a role. And when everyone plays their role and does their role well, you have this thriving community. And the same thing is true in the gut with the microbiome and all the various layers. When that's all happening together, it is wonderfully capable of dealing with glyphosate.

It's capable of dealing with some mold exposure. It's capable of dealing with gluten exposure. It is resilient and capable. It's when you start to have breakdown in those layers due to all the things we've already, you know, you've probably already heard, like antibiotics, how to antibiotics destroy the gut. Well, as soon as you take the antibiotic, you cause a killing of a bunch of the bacteria, not just the bad ones, the good ones as well. What this does is it typically reduces the amount of post biotics or butyrate that's produced.

What that when that happens, the oxygen layer gets flipped. It goes from low oxygen to high oxygen. And that's because the impact on the mitochondria. Right. So the the post biotics, particularly the short chain fatty acids help to they and your olefins and different things like that help to stimulate mitochondrial biogenesis. And my autophagy in the intestinal cell mitochondria. So the mitochondria can function well in the mitochondria are functioning well. They're producing energy from oxidative phosphorylation and pulling oxygen out of the intestinal environment to use for energy production.

So without good mitochondria with they get stuck in glycolysis. They're not pulling the oxygen out. So there's higher oxygen. So now those those obligate anaerobes they die off. And now the aerobic bacteria which tend to be more histamine producing and whatnot start to start to grow. Yeah, totally. And if you want to make it worse, you could layer in the fact that those mitochondria kind of have two fuel substrates, right? They have beta and oxygen or they have glucose and they in the in the intestine, they prefer especially in the microbiome,

Five Layers of Gut Protection 23:30

the large intestine, they prefer beta and oxygen. If there's not enough beta eight, the even if they wanted to do their mitochondrial acts for us, they can't there's it's not there. And so that's part of what happens with the antibiotic exposure and why the gut gets all messed up. All these layers start to get impacted. Those mitochondria, when they switch to glucose, they start sending off other signals to the immune system. Other cytokines and not all cytokines are bad. Many of them are inert. Many of them are good.

And so they start sending off signals to the rest of the body. Hey, we're doing this new game over here. It's less efficient. It's not what we want to do, but we got to do something to stay alive. And that causes a cascade into the immune system as well. And so it's it's this complex thing. And so when someone says like, oh, we'll just take a probiotic after you have some antibiotics, like how is that going to address that whole thing we just described. Yeah. And it can be helpful. A lot of people have gotten benefit from taking probiotics after they've taken antibiotics.

But like you said, if they're if that mitochondria, if they start malfunctioning is they're not getting the butyrate. We're still going to have this overgrowth of the aerobic bacteria that's in there. Yeah. And so, you know, one of the ways in which you can reset your gut, is to redo that oxygen balance. Right. If you drive that oxygen balance lower through supplementation you can force the aerobic bugs who can't. They can't exist in and low oxygen. So they're not actually going to start to die off.

And the, the the bugs that thrive in the low oxygen, they're going to start to bloom up because now it's finally possible for them to come out of the mucus, come out and play again because the environment's correct for them. And so you have this one, two thing where, you also need to, you know, hopefully eat more vegetables like, you know, part of grandma's wisdom around eating your vegetables is, yes, they can chain amazing phytochemicals, anti-inflammatory stuff, but they also contain a lot of the polyphenols that we need for those healthy anaerobic bacteria that make the butyrate that then goes into that mitochondria, that restarts that whole process where your mitochondria are healthy, your intestinal cells are healthier, your microbiome is healthier because it has the right environment.

And so when you do that loop, that is kind of like one of the first phases of restoring tolerance. That's where you can typically end these elimination diets where you're like, first you were paleo, then you're autoimmune paleo, then you're low histamine autoimmune paleo, then you're low histamine, low Fodmap, autoimmune paleo like that. That sort of like continued loss of tolerance to normal foods. Part of what's happening with those folks, in my opinion, a lot of the time, is this disruption of the oxygen all the way to the mitochondria into the immune system.

Yeah, that makes sense. And so ultimately should be able to handle, you know, a certain, a large variety in your diet. Now, I do think that based on individuals, each individual being different, there's kind of a certain fiber or Fodmap, tolerance that people have in general. Some people might be on one side of a bell curve, people on the other, most people around the middle. Right. But there are people out there that seem to do really well on, you know, higher amounts of animal foods, less plant foods.

And there are other people that do a lot better on high, high amounts of plant foods. Right? So I think there's some some room for individuality. And personalization there. But, you know, you should be able to like, have a salad and not like, you know, just having an incredible pain or break out with eczema. Right? Yeah. Yeah. I, I'm a huge believer in the bell curve and I'm a huge believer in individualization. And so you got you're totally correct. Some people are just going to end up on one side of that spectrum or the other.

But the amount of people who think they are on the bell, like the bell curve is statistics. It's not like your feelings about how you think you should be. Most of us should be able to just handle especially cooked vegetables, you know, even leftovers like like the the histamine issues that we're seeing right now. Part of the histamine is part of the immune system. It's part of this complex, the mast cells, if the cells are in with the intestinal cells, if you don't have that, that healthy microbiome, that healthy oxygen and that healthy, healthy mucus, the mast cells, it's not their fault.

They're literally just being exposed to everything all day long. And they're like histamine. Here's some more histamine, you know. And so yeah, you should be able no matter where you are on that bell curve. Most of us are not the Intuit. We're not on all you know, we're not built for all carnivore forever. Most of us are not built for like, all sweet potatoes forever. Like the some of the tribes down in the tropics. We should be able to handle in-season grains, in-season fruits, all those honey, you know, normal things.

Yeah. We shouldn't freak out if you have a salad and you don't feel good. Shouldn't freak out. Oh, say, oxalate poisoning or, you know, if, if you have a steak and it just sits there in your in your stomach, you shouldn't freak out about, you know, saturated fat or animal protein, right? You should be able to have these meals. Now, you may do better. You may feel better in general, doing more plant based, or you may feel better in general doing more animal based, like I, I personally do. I feel better that way.

But guess what? I can have a big salad. You know, I can have a bowl, steamed vegetables, right. And things like that and feel fine. And so, you know, just certain certain tolerance point or certain threshold, you know, that and you should be able to have good balance there. But when it's not, when you don't have that, don't just start blaming, you know, anti nutrients in plants, but instead start looking at these five layers of the microbiome and what's breaking down. Yeah. Yeah. We've put we've, we've little overindex on food.

We kind of blame it for all of our problems. And we think it's also the answer to all of our, our issues. And I think food's just a small part of the equation. What you were describing is like, yeah, can you break it down? Can you deal with it? And then how healthy is your gut dealing with it instead of making the steak wrong? If the majority of the people around you can handle the steak, it wasn't the steaks fault.

Restoring Tolerance Through Diet and Supplements 29:30

It's more about what's going on with you. Yeah, absolutely. So how do we repair this? How do you start? How do you go up these layers? Yeah. So obviously you and I both know there's a massive spectrum. Like if someone is on Seven Foods right now in a boatload of supplements because they are very reactive to their entire world, their journey and their protocol is going to be a lot longer and a lot more complex. If someone is maybe more upstream from that, they're on that cascade down. Right. They started with, just like cutting out gluten free.

And then they went to paleo, then they went to Autoimmune Paleo, and then they're on their way down to like, low Fodmap, low oxalate, you know, autoimmune paleo. Like if they're the, the the the farther you are from like almost nothing in your diet, the easier it is to fix, because the there's chemicals and there's nutrients in those foods you're cutting out that are absolutely essential for those anaerobic bacteria to grow. And so just like a fire needs oxygen and like wood or something to burn, it needs a spark.

Our microbiome needs foods to grow. And so I think one of the most important things is trying to improve food tolerance immediately. Like is as soon as you can get in whatever supplements you might need. Some people might need stomach acid support. A lot of people, the majority of people will need digestive enzymes support to deal with these foods that they have not been tolerating. Many people will need something like supplemental butyrate to help re kick that, that sort of, oxygen barrier process off.

So I start first with, okay. If you're not like, totally on the can't handle anything. Let's start with some enzymes and let's start increasing foods. And if you start adding foods back in and you start seeing you like hit a wall because you get asthma, you get, brain fog, you get a headache, something like that. That's a really good sign that we need to take a step back and say, all right, what are the pathways here? If it's headaches, maybe it's histamine. You know, maybe we do need something like tribe uterine to rebuild the mucosal membranes, rebuild the tight junctions, start to, you know, decrease oxygen in in the gut.

And then that can improve tolerance very quickly. Other people will get kind of halfway up that spectrum. And notice I didn't say probiotics at all I did I, I would include immunoglobulins. I would include curcumin. To me probiotics are higher up that that chart. Once you can process food properly and your microbiome is recovering, then bring in the probiotics. Then they're even more amazing because the environment they're entering is so much better tolerated for them, and your immune system isn't going to react to them.

There are a lot of people that are taking probiotics where your immune system's reacting to them, because it's kind of those five layers are so banged up. And so it's not the probiotics are bad. It's just that in the order of operations, depending on how banged up your layers are, you might need to pull them out. You might need to pull fermented foods out, wait a month or two and then bring them back in as your gut is getting more tolerant to the outside world. And then, especially then, that's when you can really things can totally take off to where you're back to that.

You know, those those layers of health where you can handle so much more. Some people will get stuck halfway up. And that's where I think para probiotics come in. That's where this gut immune system seems to get a little, it's maybe hardwired the wrong way at this point. If you're if you've done that, if you don't immunoglobulins, if you're if you're doing your your home is dialed, you've done these things. You're doing some enzymes, you've checked for low stomach and you checked for low beta, like you've done that stuff and you're kind of stuck.

That's where I think something like probiotics can come in and totally change your relationship to the food, to your environment. Well, let's talk about what our pair of probiotics. How do they differ from regular probiotics and how do they help to balance that immune system. So they're they're almost essentially the exact same thing as probiotics are just he killed or in that inactivated in some way. And so you can think about probiotics is live bugs that have health benefits and products as dead bugs with health benefits.

The benefits according to the research. And there's been over ten studies of single strains, same dose given to the people. Then they measure like almost everything they can measure inside the body. And what they find is the probiotics. Do the live bugs do different things that are health promoting than the dead bugs? The dead bugs do different things. And almost universally, what the dead bugs do is a modify our immune response in a healthy way. The live bugs aren't necessarily allowed to interact with the immune system like that because like you were talking about earlier, disease or not disease, but like, sepsis or some sort of infection happens when live bugs are coming into the body in a way that's not supposed to happen.

A probiotic bacteria is not really seen that much differently. If it's a alive then a, you know, a potential pathogenic bacteria. And so the immune system can't really interact with probiotics in the same way that it can with a dead bug, the dead bugs, it'll grab all day long and I'll be like, oh, this is interesting. You know, let's do some let's do some changes based on this. And so pair of probiotics in the literature, you see all kinds of health benefits benefits along the lines of skin. So eczema rosacea acne you see eye benefits.

Peridot disease benefits. You see brain benefits. Of course you see, like seasonal allergy benefits. Like that's the one of the biggest ones is, you know, folks that are kind of stuck on antihistamines. They can't figure it out even though they've done all these, you know, good work trying to get healthy. Sometimes your your immune system is just not capable of dealing with outside things. And you could take these dead bugs and it's almost it's not the same thing as, like, grabbing dirt and like, you know, smelling it and playing with it.

But like when you grab dirt and you smell and play with it, there's a bunch of dead bacteria, dead, dead stuff in that you breathe that in. And that is associated in early childhood that's associated with less asthma later, a same thing. If you had like a little farm or you had a dog, there's all this bacteria and a lot of it's dead. And if a kid is exposed to that in early childhood, later on, they have way less and, inflammatory diseases. And part of that is your immune system is sampling those, those things out in the world and saying, okay, that's, you know, that's happening.

Here's how we respond to that. And usually the response is modulation where you're you're going back towards resilience. You're not overreacting because that's that's the biggest thing is, is a lot of these seasonal allergies. It's a hyper vigilance to this inactivated material in the world. Yeah that makes sense. So it's helping balance the immune system. So these are heat killed bacteria. And basically the immune system's making modulation or balancing effect from that. So different than probiotics.

Now on the spectrum of things do you recommend probiotics. You know give it a go with probiotics before the

Probiotics vs Paraprobiotics 36:30

probiotics or how how do you how do you go about that? It's totally based on what you want in your life. Like if you're still dealing with some microbiome issues and some leaky gut and some stool issues in the toilet, you probably want live bugs. You probably want, a really well studied probiotic, not a not a probiotic that has 12 strains and the strains are not listed on the back of the bottle, but like a mega spore or something that's been studied that I would trust for those types of outcomes.

There's also really cool probiotics that are going to be coming out for, like your brain, your mood, even muscle like building muscle through bugs. It's kind of cool. That's cool stuff. If you're in the camp of why am I always so close to an inflammatory breakdown? Why do I have these, you know, rashes that pop up all the time? Why am I having brain fog? Why like, why do I have all these food sensitivities? These food allergies, these, environmental sensitivities? That's more on the immune side.

And so for, for that grouping of issues, para probiotics are wonderful at helping that issue. Yeah. That's great. Now when you're working, when you and your team are working with hard cases, I know. Let's talk about the healthy gut products. I know, I use a number of these as well. And so you start with the oxygen layer. I would imagine. So, so the tribe veteran X, and then you're also probably supporting stomach acid if that's needed. Enzymes. So you get your whole those. I'm, What what was your stomach acid support product again?

HDL guard HDL guard. Yeah, exactly. So helping support that. Now when do you do you throw a pair of probiotics in with that mix or, how do you go about like transitioning on off, you know, and going through the protocol? Yeah, yeah. We, because they're technically safer for an immunocompromised individual because they are dead already. They don't pose a, actual risk to the immune system. So if you're immunocompromised, they're extraordinarily safer. They're also safer for, you know, kids, although the some of these strains have been studying kids, the product itself hasn't been studied in kids.

I do actually start people on holes, arms, try beta necks and then, hollow immune the probiotic blend immediately. And that's kind of our, like one, two, three punch to change the food particles with the enzymes, make sure they're not showing up the way that they've been showing up. Make sure they're fully broken down so you can get the nutrients, try to sequester the anti nutrients. The tri beta next is going to totally change the bitter experience is going to start re you know healing all five layers and then the whole immune while you're introducing those foods that you maybe have struggled with.

Whether it's strawberries or maybe it's a Fodmap or whatever it is you're you're taking it in conjunction with a product that's telling your immune system to not be so reactive. So we're changing the structure of the food with the enzymes, the butyrate protecting the cells so they don't get so mad about everything. And then the hollow immune is literally giving your body a different signal while it's receiving the signal. That has failed in the past. And what we're seeing is a tolerance. Like it's like this feed for loop or tolerance increases very quickly to normal life, to normal cells.

And then yes, as you mentioned, like if you knew someone was having issues in their house or they're being exposed to a lot of things, you'd probably want to add on other products, maybe the the immunoglobulins or something, if you knew that they had stomach acid issues or they displayed symptoms of that, you'd probably add on HDL guard. But the combo of the three in general is usually extraordinarily safe and tolerated, even for people who are, very reactive to a lot of things. Yeah, I think that's really good. Yeah.

I like to add in immunoglobulins, like with people, histamine issues, things like that. It just along with the tri beta and x, I feel like it helps. At the same time we're inc we're decreasing the oxygen. We're also pulling out a lot of those, you know, histamine producing bacteria and things like that. So I feel like I it speeds the process up, the transformation of the gut.

Healthy Gut Protocol and Product Stack 40:30

A little quicker. But yeah, I haven't used the hollow immune. So I'm interested in, in, in experimenting with that as well. Here. Yeah. It's been kind of the unlock especially for the histamine folks who get stuck or anybody who's kind of stuck adding things back in, like they've made progress, but they're like they're still whatever their bodies resisting normal life hold immune is a way to go throughout the the upcoming allergy season. It's a way to go through foods that, you know, maybe corn has been an issue for you in the past.

A lot of people can use whole immune to kind of bust through those plateaus of tolerance with the outside world or the inside world with food. Yeah. That's great. Well, you guys are doing great work over here at Healthy Gut, and you guys can obviously get all those products at Healthy Gut. We also sell them on our doctor.com store as well. And a lot of practitioners are using your products seeing great results. So keep up the great work Steve. All the great research. Any any last words, inspiration or anything else that people need to know.

I mean, you know, the process keeps unfolding from there. So that's when you would start to add in your prebiotics, maybe you know, your mega pre and your mega. Yeah. Your, your spore biotics or whatever. Like that's the stack as you keep going into the life. And then, you know, I take a, I take a probiotic, I take a prebiotic. So it's not like I'm anti those things. I just think depending on where you are in your, your life cycle, they matter in their, their reintroduction phase. So other than that, I mean, I think the, the biggest thing I want people to know is that, I don't think more elimination is necessarily the answer.

If you've already done some of that. I think it's using immunoglobulins. It's using, whole designs or tribute and these things to build resilience. Because as much as you and I would love to probably be like if we were given, you know, a magic wand to change the amount of chemicals in the world, if we were able to change the way Wi-Fi is done, like, there's a lot of things that I think you and I would change GMOs, glyphosate, all this stuff. I don't see it changing. Yeah, true. Any time soon. And so to me, the damage is done

Final Thoughts on Building Resilience 42:30

and I'm going to stop being angry about the damage and start focusing on how do I build bodies that can deal in a world that's less than ideal? Yeah, I think that's so important. Especially. And, you know, this natural health world where it's like I go on social media or whatnot and everybody's, you know, let's say I put a picture up of, you know, I don't know, a strawberry. People are like, oh, histamine. Right? Or, you know, a bag of spinach or something. People like oxalates. You're getting oxalate poisoned, right?

And so, like, everybody wants to blame foods, right? And natural foods, real foods. Okay. And certainly there's some variation like you may do better on, you know, a little bit more animal based or certain things, but ultimately we should all be able to eat real foods, a real food diet, and not have these kind of reactions. And I think that's that's ultimately what you're trying to get at. And the message here is, hey, if you're sticking with real foods, okay, you should be able to consume these without having negative inflammatory reactions.

And we shouldn't just be pointing fingers at oxalates and lectins and, you know, animal protein or whatever it is that you want to, you know, that that are people are pointing their finger at. Yeah, yeah. It's it's sort of like, food porn around anger and it's it's pretty, you know, you're not, you're not going to get what you want unless you just want to be angry at strawberries and spinach, which, you know, are delicious. So. Yeah. Absolutely. All right. Well Steve, thanks again so much guys. You can find him at Healthy gut.com.

Great website great products. Thanks again for your time Steve. Everybody be blessed.