Revitalizing Health: Your Gut’s Role In Chronic Conditions

Introduction to Gut Health and Root Causes 0:00

Welcome back to the conversation. Today, I have one of my favorite people, Evan Brand Welcome. Hey, Laura. Thanks so much for having me. Oh, this is so good. I brought you in because I really wanted an expert who is really aligned with the way that I practice to help unpack, gut health, the importance of the order of operations when it comes to solving your chronic health conditions. And really, we can do some myth busting today about gut health. We can give our audience a bunch of actionable items and really get them supported in their gut health journey.

So I'm really excited to have you here. You're a Certified Functional Medicine and Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner. You have an online practice. Your focus is finding and fixing the root causes of fatigue, depression, anxiety, digestive symptoms and other issues. You have a huge podcast. You have I mean, you probably have like around 20 million downloads on your podcast at this point. I think I quit. Counting, but yeah, I was somewhere around there when we stopped counting. Yeah. You also at-home functional medicine training courses through your Functional Academy of Medicine and Epigenetics on gut, mold and energy issues.

So you train practitioners and I know I my audience here. I want you to know when when I hire health coaches for my team, I put them through Evan's training courses. So this is why I have Evan here, because the way that he practices is just incredible and the way he teaches is as well. So welcome, welcome. Let's start off by sharing with our audience, you know, why is it important that I'm bringing a gut health expert to talk on a Silent Killers summit where we're focusing on the root cause of inflammatory and chronic diseases?

We couldn't do this without a gut expert. So let's unpack why this is so important that we even start here. Sure. Well, one of my friends at the gym is a gastroenterologist. He's been a gastro doctor for 20 years. And we got on the subject of Leaky Gut the other day and he got so pissed off at me because he's like, if I hear that term leaky gut one more time, I'm going to lose it. And so I said, okay, fine. Would you rather me use the term intestinal permeability? And he said, Yes, please. And I said, okay, fine.

So when people hear leaky gut, you'll see leaky gut supplements marketed everywhere. It's a billion dollar industry to provide supplements that are supposed to soothe and heal up a leaky gut, aka a permeable gut barrier. And even in just the last 20 years, there's new onslaughts to this very delicate, basically one cell thick epithelial barrier in the gut that is separating your intestines from the bloodstream. And when you have a combination of glyphosate, dicamba, 2-4D showing up on every single client's urine that you test, you know that you're fighting an uphill battle against modern world toxicity.

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

And I was at church a couple of weeks ago

Why Gut Barrier Damage Matters 3:34

and I saw a little boy, beautiful woman carrying this little boy, and he is basically strapped up from his elbow to his hand. He's discovered in these bandages. I mean, he looks like a mummy and his skin is a mess, his face, his cheeks. And this poor kid has psoriasis so bad at two or three years old that he literally scratching himself until he bleeds in the first place. To fix these cases like this, which are more common than ever before, is working on the gut. So I literally brought her over to my house right after.

I'm like, Let me give you some of this, some of that, some of that. I guarantee this kid's got these infections. He has this problem with detox and drainage. He has this problem with his liver and kidneys, this problem with lymph. Let me help you fix all this. And so my assumption is that there are no nontoxic people left on planet Earth because I've tested clients in every corner of the globe New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, South America, Latin America, Mexico, Canada, U.S., across Europe, even in Dubai.

And I mean, you name it, I've had people everywhere and we've measured urine and all these people and everyone has something. So if you don't focus on those toxins disrupting the gut barrier and then of course, we'll get into infections, I just don't think you're going to thrive. I don't think you're going to perform your best. And even if you're listening and you're like, well, my gut is actually pretty okay, it could be better. And if it's better, that can improve how you function, how you perform, how much money you make, how good of a wife or husband you are, how good of a parent you are.

Because if there's something off there, this is affecting nutrient absorption, nutrient production, neurotransmitters and on and on. So this is a big deal. I you know, I love that you just said that there are no nontoxic people left on planet Earth. I mean, I don't love that you said that, but you know what I mean? This is a truth bomb right here. So I love your transparency and what I want to say to the audience right now is Evan and I don't stop working on our gut. Right. So we we are living in a first world country and we're exposed to toxins constantly.

And our process or our journey of working on our gut and detoxing never stops. And I just did a toxin test a few weeks ago, and I've got new metals that are, you know, thorium and cesium are showing up on my toxin test. I'm like, okay, I need to do some metal detox right now. Mercury is high on me right now. I've done so much toxin work and it's like, All right, what's going on? What am I getting exposed to right now? What's being what's getting rained on me from the air? What? You know, in my travels is what did I consume?

What, you know, water. Yeah. That water is is a great source. And if you're in hotels and you're traveling, you're going to get exposed to on purified water because you're not at home all the time. So anyhow, what I want to say is we're not done working on our guts. We have to be. It's just as important as any other hygiene process that we go through from day to day. I mean, we take a shower every day, we wash our laundry, we take care of our home environment. We also take care of our guts. We don't stop.

Yeah, well, you know, it's funny that you're in California, because if I were to plot on the on the Globe, if we had a globe here in front of us, if I were to if you were to say cesium, I would plot you in California, on the coast, close to the coast. It's always I don't know. I mean, I don't know. I mean, we could go crazy here. We could turn this into a big tangent. You know, there's you know, Fukushima in Japan is still leaking. They're still dumping that wastewater from the nuclear reactor, I think is happening in 2011.

Here we are 13 years later. But any time I see cesium, it's always in California clients. Now, of course I see it in Utah, I see it in Idaho and other places, but that's yeah, that's interesting. And so, yeah, it sounds like you've still got work to do. And I do too. I just resubmitted a urine sample literally yesterday I just mailed off a kit myself, so this idea that you're going to magically detox everything and then all of a sudden rainbows appear and you're just done and you truly reach that checkered flag.

I don't know. I just I don't think that exists. And I would I would hope that we can reframe people's mindset to just elevating, elevating, elevating. And there's really no limit to this. Think of that as just an abundance mindset. We could continue to elevate how good we feel, because if you look back at your childhood and we look at people that are three years old, five years old, ten, 15, 20, we test generations. I'll look at the grandchild, the child, the mother, the grandmother, and we'll see the same toxicities, the same infections, the same problems throughout three, four generations all the time.

So in my head, I somewhat fantasize about when I was a teenager, I'll think, Oh, I felt so good in Europe. But when I look back, I'm like, No, actually not. My wife's like, No, babe. Like when we were teenagers, we took naps all the time and your skin wasn't very good and my skin wasn't very good. And you had IBS and you know, you had sleep issues. I'm like, Oh, yeah, okay. So, so what am I looking for then? Because we think we want to go back to how we used to feel. But if you study hard enough and you look at yourself deeply enough, you may find you never actually felt that optimal.

And what you're achieving now is brand new to you. So yeah. I, that's how I look at it. Now. I'm in better health at 51 than I was at 17 for sure. First, I know I'm aging in reverse. I know. I know. You look great. You really do. For 51. My God, I wouldn't say you're look older than 37 right now. Well, thank you, Evan. You're another one of those who has a baby face. But you are. You're getting up there in age two. I'm 32. I'll be 33 in January.

Gut Testing as the Foundation of Healing 9:13

Well, you look like you're 22. All right, good. I'll take it. Okay, so let's get into this. Like you and I both agree, there's a we love gut testing. We love to know what's happening in the gut. We both like to start here as a foundation of healing. So if we're going to detox somebody, if we're going to get the metals out, we're going to get the environmental toxins out, we're going to get the mold out. If we're going to get you know, if we're going to get the nutrient deficiencies corrected, we need to start with gut health.

So can we talk about why this is a starting point? And I tell people when they come into my community, I don't care what work you've done before, it doesn't matter what you've done. We have to look at your gut again. If your gut test, if your life gut test was six months ago, we need to look here again and see what's happening. Before I put you on any big detox protocol. So can you talk about why this is important? For sure and to speak on the timeline of it? I mean, we've seen big changes in the GI map in six weeks with people.

So yeah, you're right. And we both love the GI map. It is a great, great test. It's easy to read. It makes sense to people. It's been around for decades. It's a great test. So why do we start there? Well, that's that's how you can find some of the big smoking guns that are really derailing your health. I mean, I've been the parasite guy, the gut guy for probably a decade. I mean, when I first started my podcast in 2011, 2012, there was like nobody really out there at the time talking about this stuff.

And it was my own selfish struggles that I was trying to resolve. But luckily the stool testing is really what got me maybe 70% better because that's where I discovered I had H. Pylori, I discovered I had giardia and I discovered I had cryptosporidium. So these parasites, if you were to go to a conventional GI doctor, they possibly will get missed. Obviously, they probably will get missed. I want to say possibly it happens all the time, Barbara, as well. Sometimes you see false negatives from the conventional testing.

Luckily, the DNA sampling of the stool that we can do now is so sensitive that we can pick up stuff where other places get missed and it's only one day, one sample. So I'm not getting paid by them to tell you that. But it's it's great for that reason because even in a young child, which potentially have my practice now as children, which I love, it's it's super, super fun, especially because I have three kids. But when you take a child who has been to the pediatrician and they have no answers, but maybe throwing them on some antibiotics, which is a terrible idea, if we run the GI map, we can see, oh, look, poor guy.

He's got age, pal. All right. My daughter, Summer, she had a problem when she was two years old. And I think all the time about if I wouldn't have found that and if I wouldn't have treated that so early in her, how would that progress for five, six, seven years later? And when you when you look at your neuro process? So the whole neurotransmitter function, dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, we measure this on organic acids testing and 99 out of 100 people have an issue with brain chemistry and I typically trace it back to the gut because there's many cases where I didn't come in with specific amino acids to raise or tweak neurotransmitters.

We just simply cleared gut infections and all of a sudden brain chemistry started to self-regulate. So the whole gut brain connection people do talk about, but I don't think you understand until you've been through it, which is me. I was in Austin in 2013. I remember laying on the floor with my wife having a panic attack for no good reason. And it was within a few weeks after that that I tested my store and I found the H. Pylori. And if you actually look into the literature, if you put in H. Pylori anxiety, all right, depression, it's there.

Meaning these infections can literally hijack your normal emotional processing and emotional regulation. So if you're a woman listening, you're on antidepressants, you're on anti-anxiety medication, you feel overwhelmed about the possibility of getting off your pharmaceuticals simply by looking in this place and fixing these infections. You could reverse 20 years of depression within probably six weeks. And it's happened before clinically. Oh, yeah. I mean, this is one of the biggest breakthroughs that are that our client population has is mood stabilization.

Right. Whether it's anxiety, depression, anger, whatever it is. And people's families start to notice like, mom, dad, you're you're you're so much happier now. You're so much you're such a pleasure to be around. This is what people want is to fix their relationships and starts with you want to have a better relationship fix your gut. Name in we've saved marriages you know I was joking with with our mutual friend Shevaun because we did a webinar on gut the other day and and I told her that I've saved many, many marriages because, you know, let's let's role play if this is okay with you, I want to recall how this goes down. Okay.

So so here's what happens. So the woman who may get exposed to mold right from college or office or whatever. Okay, so she's got the mold exposure, which I think opens up the back door, weakens the immune system, lowers natural killer cells, throws off the 1 to 2 balance, etc., opens a back door for Candida to move in. Okay. So maybe now she has a yeast infection, so now she feels unsexy. Okay? So now the sex life is already, you know, going downhill. But then she has H. Pylori. She has a couple of parasites now she has bacterial overgrowth.

Her fat digestion is terrible. So she has messy stools for pancreatic last days is dropping. So she's not just digesting well at all. Her calprotectin is through the roof. So now she she has all this gut inflammation. So she got messy stools, he's got yeast, she's got bacterial issues. She thinks she smells bad and she might she thinks that she looks bad and she might she could be bloated, she could be pale. She could have issues with skin complexion and just overall not feel the best. Now, the husband's coming after her. Hey, honey, I want a piece of that.

And she's like, No way, don't touch me. Don't look at me. I feel gross. And so then so then the marriage. Dinners don't go there. So good. Evan, I want a piece of that. Okay, keep going. Okay. So this is being real here. Everyone like either right now, either people are like, I love these two, or they're like, this is crazy. Get me out of here. But I have I have a feeling like this is better than television and people are like, yes, leaning in. So amen. Yeah. And this is just the way I talk to my clients.

Do I just keep it real with you guys? Because we're all human at the end of the day, no matter how, no matter how many letters you have after your name, you know you're human. Okay. And so okay, so now there's an issue where let's let's throw the man under the bus here, too. So. So now he has erectile dysfunction, right? Because some of these infections can affect ability. So now you're in a hyper coagulant state. So you have issues with blood flow and circulation. So now the man may have poor erections.

Maybe there's an issue getting an erection or maintaining an erection. And so now they're totally all they do now is they sit on opposite ends of the couch and they send each other Instagram reels and the intimacy is gone. And you do that and you extrapolate that out for five, ten, 15 years. And then you wake up one day and you don't even know who they are. They're your friend, they're your roommate, they're your partner. Your best friend, maybe. For sure. But but they're not your lover anymore.

And so I think truly, just based on what I've seen clinically, you know, I talk about this stuff all day. I'd say 98 out of 100 women that I work with that have gut issues have an issue that's deeper than just the got the gut, just the starting place. But it's deeper than that. It's it's the lack of passion. It's the lack of joy. It's the lack of fulfillment, the lack of purpose. And I think a lot of that is stemming from the microbiome issues, because we had one woman, she was depressed for 20 years.

Okay? I'm like, okay, that's overwhelming. Like, how do I approach this? But you can overthink it. When you're protocols work, they work. You just do it. You do what you got to do. So we do it. We do a follow up, give or take. Eight weeks later, I'm checking in with her. Right. How's the depression? Oh, I'm not depressed. Like you've been depressed 20 years. What do you mean, you're not depressed? Like, is it a little better? Like, give me a scale of 1 to 10. You know, ten is the worst, one's the best or whatever.

And she's like, No, I just I don't have that anymore. And it was so foreign to me that she quickly just forgot and just erased that part of her, which was part of her for 20 years. And all we did, we did.

Reading Calprotectin and Immune Suppression 17:18

We did. No. Yeah, we did no. Herbal antidepressants. Like typically I would do rhodiola, maybe some other adaptogens, etc. Maybe we're going to throw in specific amino acids for serotonin, endorphins, GABA, dopamine. We did none of that. It was a gut protocol. We had some low histamine probiotics. We had some binder support in there, and she's not depressed anymore. So that's incredible. It is. And we see this all the time. You and I, both in our practice. It's really remarkable. Once people start cleaning up their gut and then once you clean up the gut, now you're ready to do the deeper detox.

So what I want to do right now is I'm going to possess and we're going to get into this conversation deeper. What I would like to do in the next part of our conversation is I want to go into some of the markers on the GI map test. I want to talk about what they mean and then give our audience some takeaways to really solve. Start solving this. So I want to thank you so much for joining us today for the first half of our talk on gut health to our audience, I hope you found our conversation insightful and helpful and fun.

If you're a summit purchaser, stay right here because we're about to dove even deeper into this discussion with even if you're not, click on the button on this page to get access to a continuation of this conversation and many others, and get the tools you need to reclaim your health. If you're watching this continuation of my talk with Evan, thank you for being a valuable member of our community and we're going to dove right back in. So, Evan, I want to talk about some of the markers on the test.

And this is one of the reasons that I like to have my health coaches train with you because of the way that you break down the GI map test. And then I want to talk about some things that people can get going with right away to start solving their gut issues. But I'm going to jump all the way to the end of the test. And I want to talk about Calprotectin for a second. I want to talk about this inflammatory marker. So when that calprotectin is high, this is a marker of inflammation, oftentimes inflammatory bowel disease like Crohn's colitis.

And even the Western world uses a calprotectin marker to measure inflammatory bowel disease. But what I want you to talk about is what does it mean when that thing is a zero? When you see somebody has got, you know, overgrowth of, you know, opportunistic bacteria, they've got maybe a protozoa parasite in there and you see a calprotectin of zero. Where does your mind go know? So, so for our audience, zero would mean zero inflammation. My assumption and I actually was listening to a talk about peptides last night and the part of the discussion came up, which is that when the immune system is so suppressed, you really can't mount the response.

And this guy on this talk, this doctor was talking about how he had Lyme, he knew he had Lyme, but when he actually ran his antibodies, he only showed up with one band. It was like band 41. But then when he started to help his immune system improve, all of a sudden he had so many bands. So I, I'd like to hear your opinion on it as well, but when I see a zero of calprotectin, I assume, okay, this person has such a damaged immune system, they literally cannot mount an inflammatory response. And these are the people that may brag they never get sick, but then all of a sudden they pop up with cancer and we're like, Holy crap, but you never got sick.

So it's this smoldering thing, but you're too sick to respond to the insult to your gut, which is this parasite, that bacteria, that yeast, that fungus, and therefore it shows zero. But what we'll find is in this case here, this is a little girl that we had in the clinic. She was let's see, she was six years old. So this is Paloma. This was a little girl. We actually have a little bit of data on her here. So she was five against when we started. Developmental delay was a complaint, extremely gassy.

Skin health was a problem. Her social skills were not good, emotional stability was not good. Okay. And now this is the opposite of the zero. So I don't want to take you away from the zero. But in her case, Calprotectin was ridiculous. Over. Oh, my gosh. I have never seen a calprotectin that high. That's it. I'm just looking at her whole thing. I mean, she's got blood. Her secretary, IGA, his office is. Oh, my goodness, this poor little thing. Yeah. So this is a six year old, the synovial activation protein.

I mean, so this is potentially even turning into like an autoimmune condition. This could be some sort of like a Crohn's ulcerative colitis. I mean, it's not looking good when the occult blood, which is a microscopic bleeding. So if you're watching this and if you run this and you see blood, in most cases we can resolve this. There's been a few cases where we recommend a colonoscopy and we've seen polyps and other issues show up. But a lot of the time we can fix this on our own. But yeah, but this is this is a mess.

And and this is why we love the GI map, because this really shows what's under the hood. And you're lucky if you can get a GI doctor to run Calprotectin, but the chances of them running this other stuff is it's not likely. I love that we're just showing this right now. I didn't know you were going to have this on hand, so this is great. Let's scroll up. And by the way, my I'm on the same page as you. So if a calprotectin is zero, this and you have, you know, a lot of obvious gut conditions, you know, commensal bacteria and and pathogens going on, this is not a good sign.

This is a sign that your immune system is wiped out. And so we should see a normal inflammatory response when you have infections. So we're looking at the first page of the GI map here, and this is the pathogenic section. And so let's talk about this for a second. She's got a couple of pathogenic bacteria here. Yeah. And this happens all the time. We see it in kids. I mean, kids play in the dirt, which is great. And you can potentially get E coli from soil, food, water, etc., maybe even maternal transfer.

I mean, some of these things are potentially coming for mom depending on how the birth went, what was her vaginal health, was it a C-section, etc.? And when you get to page two, like you'll see the low rise starting to creep up. So likely some of the herbs that were used to knock down, let's say the staff or let's say the E coli. You see Candida is on here. Some of those herbs are pretty broad spectrum that we may even be able to knock right down some. Even though it wasn't flagged high, it's still on my radar.

Always. Mm hmm. In her case, too, I'm surprised it's not higher. But a lot of times in these kids, you'll see the beta blocker on a day goes sky high. And this is a huge problem. If you look at the literature on breast cancer or colon

Key GI-MAP Markers: Bacteria, Mold, and Gluten 23:38

cancer or many, many other cancers, a lot of it has a root in issues with the glucagon addition pathway, which is how we conjugate meaning. We wrap up in a straight jacket and prevent from recirculation these toxins in these hormones. So let's talk about this beta glucan. It's really quick because I love that we have this on the GI map test. So when we want to, when, when we're trying to get an idea of how someone's body, how efficiently someone's body is able to detox, is able to actually expel toxins through the GI tract.

So if your body's working correctly, toxins should funnel to the bowels and be moved out of the body with the daily bowel elimination. And when this beta glucan on it is is high. This enzyme just makes toxins recirculate back into the body. So this is a glimpse into, huh? Is this person going to even be able to detox if I start putting them? I can you imagine if we put them on a I'm asking the audience, can you imagine if we put you on us on a heavy detox protocol yet you can't get up, get the toxins out of your bowels, they just recirculate back into your body.

I mean, and this is a critical marker. Yes. Yeah, it is. And in her case, it's not terrible. I mean, you can see it's creeping up here. But overall, the good news is we get this down by fixing the gut. And a lot of times just what the gut protocols we're using this will self-correct. So that's that's decent. Now, I'd like to just briefly show some other stuff here, too, because what we like to do is we like to stack the stool with the urine because a lot of times you'll find things on organic acids that you just don't find on the stool.

So for example, the mold colonization markers, these are incredibly valuable. In her case, it looked like she was okay. But this does show something different than the stool. The stool showed Candida was just moderate here. It's organic acid says, no, it's actually higher. And we do see some carbolic acid too, which could be linked to Fusarium and then also the stool, the GI map, it did miss the Clostridia. And when we see kids on the spectrum, when we see kids that have issues with social development or being with other kids, or these are the kids that are getting in trouble at school, maybe they get slapped with some type of diagnosis, some acronym, and those are not helpful acronyms because this is the real acronym you need to be looking at, which is EPA.

This is an organic acid that becomes elevated when you're growing clostridia in the gut. And any kid who's on the spectrum or any kid who has like social emotional problems, nine times out of ten, they're going to have this elevation. And so now if we just paint the whole picture, okay, we've got we've got the stool, we've got the urine, and we didn't even look at the others. I mean, we could look at Michael, this poor kids off the charts with okra toxin. Even though her test didn't show Aspergillus, she's off the charts with okra toxin.

I think she's never going to fix her gut until the okra toxin is resolved. The rest of it was clear we ran a toxin panel to just for fun. Let's see what showed up there. Gasoline additives like every other human. The styrene, ethyl benzene, chemicals like every other human. But overall, this chemical profile. It scares me when we get to like the chemicals here. So the organic phosphates, these are pesticide formulation chemicals. This is scary. 95th percentile would be 16. She's a 92. So this means she's literally higher than like 99.9% of humans that run this test.

So when you take all of that, you try to condense all of this into a digestible protocol that in this case the child can handle and that the parents can keep up with their. If you're an adult, truthfully, just forget the kid part. We see adults that look like this all the time. Now it's a matter of peeling back the layers. So getting the gut right, lowering the inflammation, working on the chemicals, working on the mold, working on the yeast, the bacteria. Yeah. So there's a good seven, eight, nine root causes here that could change this person's life forever.

So if someone is selling you were marketing you on this idea that there's like this one silver bullet that's going to fix you. It's probably not true. It looks more like this. It does. And if somebody is marketing to you that you just need to fix your hormones or you just need to fix your thyroid, or you just need or you just need to fix your gut run. Because it's not that it is a much bigger picture and there's an underlying reason. So yes, we need to fix your gut, but underlying why is the gut disrupted?

Is it glyphosate? Is it is it a parasite? Is it something like what's happening in there that's creating this disruption in the immune system? So it's not just one thing. It is it is a and there's an order of operations to solve this as well. You don't just run into, you know, detoxing somebody without supporting their drainage pathways in their organs of detoxification and their gut. So that they don't drops. You don't horkheimer them and drop their energy and make them feel lousy. Yeah, there's there's some people where their constitution is strong enough.

You can kind of go right in liver, adrenal or kidneys, limp support, start killing bugs and detoxing stuff right away. But the vast majority of people, even in the last five or six years, their constitution is much weaker. Therefore, we do have to kind of tiptoe into this more. And I've talked with other practitioners, I'm sure you've seen the same thing that in the last five years alone, people are appearing to be more sick, more symptomatic and more of the sensitive snowflakes like me, like more people are becoming that sensitive.

And so, yeah, we got to we got to take our time sensitive snowflake. I love it. Okay, so I want to talk a little bit more about some of the markers on the GI map, because this is really supportive to our community in terms of the let's talk about the commensal healthy bacteria for a moment. So those are the good guys. Those are the bacteria that we want thriving. When you looking at the GI map, you want all of these to fall in the green range and sometimes they're high, sometimes they're low, sometimes they're a mixed bag.

So and this can shift, you know, in a matter of overnight hours, days or weeks, depending on what you're eating, your stress levels, what you're being exposed to. So when I do the GI map test, I look at trends, I try to look at three trends. I look at patterns like, what's the pattern of the commensal bacteria? Rather than getting fixated on each individual bacteria, how do you approach it? Agreed. And here's the thing that we know, and I'm not trying to turn this into a mold episode, but here's the reality.

If you look in the literature, you type in mycotoxins, lactobacillus or just mycotoxins microbiome, what you're going to find is that mold toxin specifically lowers your lactobacillus and bifida, which are the most important bacteria in the gut that help you do so many things. So if we look at the trend of commensal and we see everything is trending low, sure, we can come in and we can start to supplement and we could throw in all these good microbes and that's great. And we can do really good work like that.

But truthfully, until the toxin issue is resolved, I think you're really fighting an uphill battle and it's going to be difficult to fully resolve the good guys until the toxins are gone. Absolutely. And then in terms let's talk about the opportune mystic bacteria section. So these are bacteria that normally live inside the human body and at low levels, they're not a problem. But when they grow, when they start to overgrow, they can become problematic. And the way I explain this to my community is it's like it's like teenagers.

If you have two of them hanging out in your living room watching a movie, everything's good. But if they call 30 of their friends, now you have a party at your house and now you have a problem, you've got a noise problem. They're eating all your food, they're roughhousing, they're breaking stuff. And that's kind of like these bacteria. When they overgrow, they become problematic, like like a group of teenagers. So we love the teenagers, but we also know that they're that they can be poor. So here you go. This is the opportunistic overgrowth section.

So if all these were in the normal range, we wouldn't have a problem. But when they start to overgrow, what happens? Evan Well, bad bugs make toxins which make you feel like crap. And in some cases, these bacteria can then be a prefect. Was it for an autoimmune disease? So in the case of Klebsiella, we know the Klebsiella is linked to Hashimoto's. So any woman with Hashimoto's that's autoimmune thyroid issues, you could potentially have Klebsiella. So if we see thyroid antibodies on blood and then we see Klebsiella in the stool, we can match those up and go, Yep, your thyroid issue.

This is a piece of the puzzle. When we talk about psoriatic arthritis or aura or even juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, we see a big link with Proteus, for example, or even Central Beckner. So this whole category here is even more important to look at, which are the inflammatory and the autoimmune related bacteria. So if you see these, these are actually even a higher priority than just the dis biotic flora. Now, when it comes to children, when we hear this term, pandas, pediatric acute neuropsychiatric syndrome associated with strep or disorder associated strep, this means that your kid has sensory issues.

They have issues with clothing, maybe their food sensitivities, etc.. We're going to be prioritizing working on the strep because what'll happen is when stress this high, in her case, it was over ten times higher than normal. The antibodies that go to target strep could accidentally target the brain. And now you've got this overnight OCD, which can occur in adults also. So yeah, we'll prioritize the staff, the strep, the Morganelli. But if I had to just pick one of the biggest priorities on this sheet, this particular woman, we'd say Klebsiella.

And it's not like I'm going to do anything that different. I'm going to use herbs that are going to knock all this stuff down back to normal. But just in terms of helping the client understand where your issues coming from, I'd point a finger at this one and if we went back up, you'll see that there was pylori here too. So I think this is going to be another one of my top priorities. Yes, absolutely. Go down to the bottom. Let's take a look at the at the data. This markers, Gill, is actually. Better than the little girl was.

Interesting look at her digestive markers. So despite all of that, she seems to be okay at the digestion piece. But let's talk about the ingestion piece at a moment because I love this section of the test as well, which is this de autocrat state that occurred in the last days. And oftentimes if you don't get digestion dialed in, if you don't support this area, if you need it, you will be on a hamster wheel forever trying to solve your bloating, your constipation, your your food intolerances. Explain why this digestion piece is so important.

So the mechanism of H. Pylori is that it damages the parietal cells and the stomach, and those are the cells that help you to secrete HDL, which is your hydrochloric acid. When that domino effect is not working properly, meaning you have this infection, which 51% of the world population has, but your levels are too high when that HDL is too low, it essentially turns off the whole domino effect of everything else working properly, meaning your pancreas getting the signal to help start producing enzymes.

And all of a sudden you go from a person who could eat anything to a person who can't eat anything without bloating, burping, gas, etc.. And if we see and hear those symptoms, oftentimes we're going to see issues with sciatic nerve being elevated and elastics being low. Now, I don't have this woman's protocol in front of me, but I can assure you she had to be on some sort of acid and enzymes. There's no way that her gut picture look that bad, but yet her last days was amazing and her Seattle crit was nothing.

So if I had her supplement list in front of us, we'd probably see she had an acid, an enzyme formula in there. Also glitter on today's looked great. Really Surprising. Maybe this woman had some sort of hormone support formula that maybe had some calcium de glue great. Or something else in there to help lower this because this should have looked worse. And in most cases it would have. And then when you get down to the gluten antibodies, for example, the Anti Ugly and IGA, I love this test because I call this the lie detector for glue.

Go back to the little girl because that wants the sky high. Let's show our audience that one again. So this actually is a gluten sensitivity marker. And let's let's unpack some misconceptions around this marker, because sometimes when people see it's normal, they think it's a hall pass to eat as much gluten as they want and it's not so

Digestion, Gluten, and Leaky Gut 35:48

so this this anti ugly and I just point that out there hers was sky high at 354. Yeah so we tell in this case and it's a chart which all the parents hate she clearly has a problem with gluten. We can't prove and say 100% that that's driving up the inflammation. We can't prove and say that eating a piece of bagel is driving the intestinal bleeding. But we can say it's not helping and it's certainly driving this immune dysregulation. So in her case, if she gets off gluten and she's away from it for a good 3 to 6 months, hopefully this will all self-correct and then, of course, the protocol we're using to fix all the other gut issues, hopefully this will self-correct.

But this is I call it the gluten lie detector test because someone will say, oh, I haven't eaten gluten. And like this says otherwise, are you sure? And then they go, Oh yeah, by the way, went to a party football party. I had some pizza and some wings. I didn't think it was a big deal. Like, Well, maybe you got away with it, but overall your immune system doesn't like it, so don't do it. And there's so many good alternatives now that it's really not that hard to get rid of. And let's talk about when it's low.

So the anti ugly at 98 let's say is normal. So my take on this is you can have a false negative, right? It's more likely of a false negative than a false positive on this. And I and I tell people, you know, we're in this early stages of supporting your health and immune system and gut, like get the gluten out, even if you're an ugly and IgG is normal. Yeah. I talked to one of my very first interviews over a decade ago was with a guy named Dr. Rodney Ford. He's a pediatric gastroenterologist. Awesome dude. Awesome dude.

And he said that eating a little bit of gluten was like being a little bit pregnant. So you're either kind of you are or you're not on it. And so I like that because some people, they can do it. That cheat meal thing, 80, 20 rule, whatever. But if you're someone who's been chronically ill and you really want to get better, here's the truth. Now, this test didn't show vanillin, but what Dr. Ford and I discussed was that even in someone who maybe they don't have gluten antibodies show up, it's likely that this glittered in protein is still going to elevate XYZ inulin and potentially cause intestinal permeability a.k.a leaky gut, even if there wasn't an IG response here.

So overall, I just think it's not worth it. Mm hmm. Yeah, it's not. And then can you. I want to just make a comment about Zombieland. Right now, I tend to not runs on pollens because there's so much data on this test that points towards leaky gut, and the Zombieland can be falsely negative and give people a false sense of security. So I actually don't love a Zombieland test just because the accuracy of it isn't great. And and we want this. We want the test to be really meaningful for people. And we can look through that and see like your echo mantia is low.

Like this means probably leaky gut is there and your, you know, your calprotectin is high and your, you know, your immunoglobulins are low like leaky gut is here even if the zone you want doesn't say so. Just what's your take on that? Well, you just saw my test report, so I'm not running it clearly. Yeah, I know. And I get people who are like, why don't you run that? I want that. I'm like, Well, if you really want to spend the extra money, but it's not going to change what I recommend for you if if a test doesn't change the outcome of my recommendations, why should we spend the money on it?

Agreed. Yeah, I don't run it. If they beg us, you know, I'll do it and I'll look at it. I'm like, Oh, that's interesting. But it's something a lot of there's not a lot you can do with it. And it's funny. It's like, well, maybe it'll listen to a podcast or something and they, they heard like, I should do this test and yeah, so, so glad we're talking about all this. So let's shift in the next few minutes. We have got a few more minutes, so okay. Let's do. It. Okay. So let's talk about some solutions here.

We really kind of unpack this test, really showed what's happening here and this has been really eye opening for people. I'm sure people are like, I want to get a test and see what's happening. I work with a practitioner who knows how to interpret it and help you, but what are some things that our audience can do right now to start solving this, even if they don't have a gut test like that? Well, I've tested thousands of people and I talk with Mosaic who bought great planes. I talked to them the other day and apparently worldwide, I'm in the top ten of practitioners running the most labs, and I'm only doing clinic like two and a half, three days a week.

So if I was working full time, I'd probably smoke the numbers. But I don't say that to toot my horn. I just say that to say that I've seen thousands of these reports and I can tell you with confidence, anyone who has an issue with mood, energy, sex, drive, sleep, skin or gut like green in Green Bay, Manchester. Yeah, they likely have some particular blend of yeast, fungal bacterial gut inflammation type issue that we've shown you today. Therefore, in some cases, if budget doesn't permit or I have clients literally in the jungle in Ecuador and we literally had to deliver supplements on a donkey one time, like the last mile delivery was on a donkey up.

So in those cases where it's difficult logistically to get labs to and from, I've had enough experience, protocol wise, that I feel comfortable just throwing people on a protocol. So, you know, I don't want to turn this into like an Evan brand supplement company sales pitch, but I do have specific microbiome support formulas which people can mimic and you can replicate and you could look for other professional brands that you like and you could mimic some of that. But for example, I have a formula that we use called microbiome support, one which we use a lot for.

All right. So in the case of Paloma, the little girl, you would want to look for a blend like this. You don't have to get mine. Okay. There's a million blends like this, but you could get something like this, which would have a combination of mastic gum to help with age, polo, rye, some clove and berberine, some barberry, some Oregon grapes and wild indigo. So you could run something like this for two or three months and you could make a huge dent if it was more of a yeast or a fungal problem. We're going to come in with a different approach.

We're going to go more a Paul, the Arco, olive horsetail, French tarragon root. And this is going to be more like a yeast solver. And then obviously you can throw in specific probiotics. I have a blend. It's a low histamine blend. I interviewed Tanya Dempsey. She's like the Marcelle doctor guru and I had her review some specific probiotic strains that I use and she's like, Yeah, that would be like a Marcelle Histamine intolerance approved blend. So by using lower histamine strains of beneficial microbes using herbal antimicrobials, antifungals, helping things to support lymph, whether this is red fruit, you might use things to help the spleen as well.

Practical Gut-Healing Protocols and Support 42:38

You may be using some binders like I love using a blend of a zeolite, a charcoal volvic minerals. You can get people better even without lab testing. Often I'm stacking in extra liver support. It could be medicinal mushrooms, it could be adaptogenic herbs if they're in a real funk. So we may throw in some albuterol, we may throw in some cordyceps to help them get up on their feet again. Lately, because of the issues we're seeing with long COVID, there's some cool science coming out on even using nicotine to help these people out of the hole.

So we're using nicotine patches now to help clear out the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor where the spike protein is getting stuck. And all of a sudden these people that were in brain fog where they couldn't even keep up with their supplements, they can now focus again. So it's kind of an art of you're pulling these pieces for this body part in this piece is for that body part and people can can feel better within realistically a few weeks. But you could change your life in six months. We absolutely can.

This has been so wonderful. I'm so glad we pulled up some labs and looked at them. Let our audience know. Evan, where they can find you. Sure. My website evanbrand.com is the hub for everything. So if you want to find the podcast, it's all free. If you want to find training courses, if you want to take your health into your own hands, you want to see more of this geeky stuff. You want to learn the before, the, after the protocols. How do we fix people then you can check out the courses like My Better Belly, which Laura, thank you so much.

She purchased it. She uses it for her staff. That's incredible. So if you want to learn this stuff, please take advantage of that. And if you're a practitioner and you want a deep dove into how to interpret gut the way that Evan and I just showed you, this is a great course, so definitely get access to it. One of my favorite students is a woman named Dr. Judy, who is a pharmacist who has her own functional medicine practice. Now, she ditched conventional pharmacy. She's a 100% functional medicine, and she's like, so booked up.

She can't keep up now because she took the course, got confident enough to make protocols and she's just killing it. So, yeah, it's an incredible tool. And then also, you know, I do some limited coaching for health seekers, you know, clients that need help. So if you do need help, just reach out of my sight and we'll be happy to help. So good. Evan, I love bringing you on. You've been on all my mat, all my big projects, all my summits. You're always a featured speaker. We love the way you teach.

We love the way that you approach healing the body. And I'm just so grateful that you're always a yes to come in support and be a part of the movement that we're all trying to create here in the world. There's not enough of Evan and me to go around everyone. We need more practitioners knowing how to do this. So take Evan's courses so that you can help your clients the way that we do. And any final words for our audience before we apart. Evan. Well, it's always a pleasure to be with you and you do get a certificate of completion self-abuse.

There you go a little bit. They could put it on their wall like Better Belly Certification, you know, so so if they like that, if that helps them feel more confident. But the truth is, the stuff we're teaching here is not rocket science. And when you've done it a few thousand times or more, you can help so many people. And unfortunately, right now, as we're speaking, there is someone in a waiting room in a doctor's office that's afraid and they're worried and they could be nauseous and anxious and depressed and ill.

And they're hoping that someone somewhere out there is going to give them the answer to fix them. But if it's in one of those seven minute doctor's appointments, not going to happen. And a lot of my friends, you could scroll through my contact list, doctor, this doctor that got a lot of friends that are doctors and they will agree there's not enough time in the conventional model to fix these type of chronic health issues that we're describing. If you end up with pathology, you've got a tumor, you've got this, you broke the arm, you need a new kidney.

I mean, amazing. But for this kind of stuff, you really need somebody that's walked the and can hold your hand through this. And so I think whether it's, you know, taking a course that Laura provides or someone else like me that has some information about this dove in. And for the less, you know, less than the cost of a new iPhone, you could change the whole trajectory of your life. You could potentially can't use the word preventable to say this. A lot of these things I showed you today, they're carcinogenic.

So if we can fix those things now, how does that change your future when you're 60, 70, 80 and beyond? Oh, my gosh. I love that you just mentioned the price of life. It's so it's so amazing to me how people get hung up about this isn't covered by health insurance, therefore I'm not going to do it. But they don't bat an eye to go spend 1200 dollars or 1500 dollars on the latest iPhone. It's unbelievable. And I'm really glad you brought that up. Well, let me say this without turning it into a rant, because I'm sure we could go for longer.

But I in my head, I've been a minimalist for a long time and just happy with less. And my wife and I drove past the outlet mall during the Black Friday sale and the line of traffic was so massive.

Where to Find Evan Brand and Final Thoughts 47:48

And I said to my wife, as you drove by, I'm like, Honey, do people really still think they need this stuff? Like, I've been in those stores, like there's nothing in there that's really going to excite me, turn me on, make me feel happier, make me feel more content, help my health. In fact, by going to hurt my health, you go into one of these stores with all these off gassing chemicals and synthetic fibers. I'm like, This has nothing to offer. I just I hope that next year, when we drive past that, the line is smaller and then there's a line for you and I.

And that's the real line we want. We want the line to be something that people are going to get passion and joy and contentment and fulfillment and health from. Like that is where I wish the demand in the focus of society will go. Oh my gosh. Well, with that mic drop. So good. Thank you so much, Evan. We just love having you. And until next time, everyone take care bye now.