Unraveling Your Gut Feelings: Decoding The Gut-Brain Connection

Will Cole, DNM, IFMCP, DC

Thanks so much for having me. How are you?

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Fantastic. Thanks. How are you doing?

Will Cole, DNM, IFMCP, DC

I am doing well. Well, thank you.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Great. I wanted to do a deep dive today. Since you are such a functional medicine expert on those chronic gut conditions, you and I really love and play in that territory. Let us do a deep dive on that today. I know that you can speak to a wide range of techniques and tools that people who have been suffering from gut issues for a long time can turn to and we have a range of people in our audience from those just taking control over their health, perhaps after a new diagnosis, all the way to those folks, who I lovingly call them my summit junkies, who know more than their practitioners do about their conditions because they really had to take their health in their own hands. Then, of course, we have practitioners in the audience, who are on the hunt for new tools, because it is a really complex day that we live in. I mean, we know from personal experience, that what we went to school to learn really is no longer enough to help people get well today. We got to be proactive. I would love to dive in and just look at functional medicine itself and what it can provide to people who have been struggling with gut issues for quite some time.

Will Cole, DNM, IFMCP, DC

Yes. I really feel that it fills in the gaps in many ways for people who are struggling with chronic health problems, whether they are overtly digestive problems or chronic gut health issues, or they do not see themselves they do not have extreme or overt digestive symptoms but have underlying gut components to why they feel the way that they do. Both directly and indirectly. Certainly, functional medicine is filling in the gaps for those people. I mean, there is a lot of medical gaslighting when you are talking about these chronic health problems, and our patients are overwhelmingly extremely erudite. They are more of the summit junkies that you mentioned, and they know more than most doctors do. They are doing everything their doctors have told them to do, but they are still spinning their wheels. For people that are newer to what we do in functional medicine, well, I mean, being in telehealth for the past 13-plus years, a lot has changed over that time period that people just did not know about functional medicine. Now the Cleveland Clinic has a functional medicine center. It is not what it once was, as far as mainstream awareness of it, but still, there is a long way to go. I think we are still just scratching the surface of educating people on what their options are within their own wellness and their own health care.

The main differences between what we do in functional medicine and contrasting that with conventional mainstream medicine. Number one, we interpret labs using a thinner reference range. I mean, for anybody going through digestive problems or any inflammatory problem that has a gut-centric component to it, that right there is hugely helpful because you are looking at optimal, not average. The lab reference range is largely based on that statistical bell-curve average of people who are going to labs or people who are going through health problems, and that is who you are being compared to if you just look at that reference range. 

In functional medicine, we are looking at where your body functions the best. That is the functional range, where does longevity, where does vibrant wellness reside, which is typically a tighter interval of numbers within that larger reference range. That is insightful for somebody who is going through a chronic inflammatory problem or a chronic digestive problem, utilizing the labs you may already have from your conventional doctor but interpreting them through the lens of functional medicine, interpreting them through the lens of optimal, not just average. Looking at the gray areas is hugely insightful. Sometimes that begins with an initial telehealth consult with me. It is not running all the fancy labs per se, even though there is a time and place for these more granular, next-level labs. But sometimes it is. Has your doctor talked about this, this, this, and this? Oh, no, they never mentioned that, or I saw that a little bit off, and no one ever said anything. It is this myriad confluence of different factors that is at play here. The basic labs can tell us if we are looking at it through the lens of optimal, not average. Then we will run more comprehensive labs. It is based on the health history, but we are looking at what is causing these issues. What is environmental, and what is causing this dysregulation? Looking at underlying problems from a functional perspective—looking at things like SIBO, increased intestinal permeability, small intestinal fungal overgrowth, and these food reactions, things like histamine sensitivities—we see a lot of cases of this, but ultimately, realizing the body is interconnected, they do not happen in a vacuum. What is even causing these problems? A lot of our work is looking at not just the physiological dysregulation but also the mental, emotional, and spiritual sides of it. 

The mind-body connection of how these things—unresolved trauma and chronic stress—trigger digestive problems and inflammatory problems dealing with both that and the phrase that we use, both the gut and the feelings to that common gut feeling, is a human euphemism for many things in our lives. It is this deep understanding of dealing with both the physiological and psychological aspects of bioindividualities that is another major part of it. You can have these cookie-cutter approaches, but a lot of people are going to fall through the cracks. That is done both in the conventional medicine world and also in what we call green medicine, where, if you have this problem, it is the pill for the ill. If you have this, then take this, and if you have that, that could be an herb or it could be a medication. The reality is that a lot of people fall through the cracks of that oversimplified, reductive view of diagnosing a disease and matching it with a medication or a supplement. Let us actually look at the bigger context of the complexity that makes us feel the way that we do. We really tailor all of this based on all of this nuance. Food, natural medicines, and medications where needed; mind-body practices to really integrate; what is the most needle-moving toolbox? That is my long-winded explanation. I am trying to explain what we do.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Is such a great overview, though. It is really important for us to take a step back and look at the difference between allopathic medicine, natural healing, and this hybrid, and between functional medicine, which is trying to straddle both worlds using diagnostic tools and also looking at that mind-body connection. What would you say? You mentioned underlying causes, and I know you are a chronic illness clinical investigator just like me and that you really thrill to those complex cases. What do you see as the biggest underlying root causes behind chronic conditions today? What do you see as the trends?

Will Cole, DNM, IFMCP, DC

Well, I mean, you are absolutely right in the sense that things are beyond the basics. I mean, most people that we see are eating way better than the average American but are still struggling. There are a lot of combination of different things at play here that are causing chronic digestive problems. I would expand that chronic autoimmune inflammatory problems, which oftentimes have a gut-centric component to them, are why they are doing all the things that are still struggling. Part of it is the fact that, look, what they are doing is making them better off than they would be if they were not doing what they are doing. The good, healthy wellness stuff that they are learning at the summits, reading in the books, or listening to podcasts. But a lot of what I am talking about with telehealth patients, and this is the newest topic of my newest book, “Gut Feelings,” is talking about this almost orthorexic obsession, where it is stressing about healthy things that are good for your health. What could start with the best of intentions? You said they had to be their own health advocates. They have had to be their own doctors. They have had to figure a lot of crap out. But then what began with good intentions ends up being this big. It is tough to be your own doctor but also be the one struggling. I get it. There is real trauma around the symptoms and flare-ups, and there is a lot of trauma around food’s implication in that. There are unintended consequences and unintended complexity in the anxiety and stress around these topics: is it my actual symptoms or is it my anxiety about my symptoms that makes the issue worse?

If you want to look at what the underlying causes are, there are both physiological and psychological components. Physiologically, there are real things going on here from an epigenetic genetic mismatch, or an evolutionary mismatch, as our researchers refer to it. It is looking at the foods that we were eating that contained environmental toxins, and it is looking at the connection between our gut microbiome and the soil microbiome and the foods that we are eating that are grown in that soil. That is, physiologically, what is at play here. Our genetics have not changed in 10,000 years, yet our world has changed dramatically in such a finite period of time. You are putting that into context with the totality of human history. Looking at it through the lens of an ancestral health perspective, I think it is very helpful to understand why we are seeing this epidemic rise of digestive gut health problems and autoimmune inflammatory problems because there is an epigenetic genetic mismatch going on here. Our microbiome is living in a brave new world in many ways, and it is triggering genetic predispositions that have always been there but are being awoken like never before in human history because of this onslaught of this mismatch. 

That is, physiologically, what is going on here. We measure all this stuff in labs, and we can see it and see these numbers improve. But on the feelings side of the gut, bidirectional crosstalk is looking at unresolved trauma. It is looking at chronic stress. Do not underestimate the things that are at play here. Then my connection to what I was saying about health-related trauma—I call it shame formation in the book—is that this stuff is a third part of it. Okay, I may have stuff from my childhood that has not been dealt with, but then I have had these digestive flares, these autoimmune flares, and I have anxiety about health-related anxiety, which is another part for many people that are listening to this right now, that it is not easy, it is muddy, and it is complicated because they are struggling and people are not giving them answers. But hopefully we can start to untangle this entanglement that is at play for these people.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yes, that is beautifully said. I totally agree with you, actually. It is because we are asking so much of the human body and the human psyche just to survive modern life alone right now. I certainly went through that myself. People always ask, Well, why did you get so sick? On the other side of this, now you are the root cause, lady. Looking back, why was it that nothing special happened to me? A lot of it was because I was formula-raised. I was the firstborn. My mom flipped houses in the seventies and eighties. She was around a lot of toxins, but not anything special. Then I got a lot of antibiotics because of ear infections, and then, raised on Costco foods but decades into organic food eating, and then just getting sicker and sicker, and to your point, extremely orthorexic. This is not unusual stuff in this day and age. It had to survive in the age of Monsanto, glyphosate, and all the rest. Given all of that, if somebody comes to you and says they have survived all the pandemic stress, they have had some early-life trauma. Maybe they have manifested these chronic gut conditions. Even though they are organic now, of course, that has not always been the case. Where do you want to start? Someone comes to you with an autoimmune gut condition, such as colitis or Crohn’s. Where do you start?

Will Cole, DNM, IFMCP, DC

Yes, and I would open it. I am repeating myself a little bit, but just maybe to shed light on the people that are out there that are interested in this information or they know they have some problems, but they go to the bathroom. All right. But they do not realize that that downstream brain health issue, or the autoimmune problem, is not digestive in nature. There are a lot of people whose upstream driver is an underlying gut component, but they are going to the bathroom just fine. But things like bacterial imbalances in the gut, increased intestinal permeability, or leaky gut syndrome may not have any extreme digestive symptoms but are triggering inflammation and a cascade of inflammation upstream. But for anybody, whether we are having a digestive problem or they are having some larger metabolic hormonal brain health, inflammatory problem, or autoimmune problem, it is the most unsexy part of my job, but it is the most sacred, and it is a health history. It is spending an hour or an hour and a half with somebody every day and asking a lot of questions. 

I once had one older gentleman tell me years ago, Are you in the KGB? Because we ask so many freaking questions. But I said this had been in his 80s, and I said, No, but I want to not waste your time. I do not want to be redundant and just go to the run-of-the-mill questions. I want to give it fresh, thoughtful insight. What are the stones that are most likely to have something underneath them? What are the stones? I have not been looked at before, so it starts with that. Then it is that conversation that I have with people online that informs me what labs are the most relevant for them. You do not need to run all the labs. I want to know: what are the labs that will be the most insightful, and what are the labs that are not just insightful for information gathering but also insightful from a protocol development standpoint? 

There is a difference there because then I prioritize labs for people. Okay, these are the ones that are going to inform what we do, and we can compare and contrast the data to make sure we are doing what we should be doing. But then what? Okay, this would be helpful, insightful, and illuminating to understand your bioindividuality, but it is not necessarily going to determine what we do. It is going to be okay to learn about your health and curate lab data based on that information. Then we develop protocols based on that information. There is a science and an art to this; I mean, there is data in clinical experience, but then it is holding space for somebody and knowing where they are at. As I said earlier, stressing about good, healthy things is not good for your health. Sometimes we have to design a protocol that I would consider plan B in my type A mind: Okay, this is pragmatic plan B, but plan B for that person, and this is the artistic aspect of what we do. Plan B ends up being Plan A because Plan B causes them so much stress and obsession, which makes it more sustainable, more fun, more interesting, and not a source of dread and shame. 

That is the nuance in the building of things. All of this stuff is evolving over time, too. It involves food changes; it involves natural medicine protocols; it involves mind, body, somatic practices, breathwork, and trauma work to really deal with it. I mean, a lot of what we do has to do with the neuro-amino-endocrine axis of the intersection between the nervous system and your gut, which is a major part of that right immune system, inflammation, which 75% of that is originating from the gut as far as the immune system is concerned. the endocrine system that we have, the gut-brain endocrine axis. It is certainly a great job. It is a sacred responsibility, but it is not easy. I do not want to make it too simplistic. It is. These are not quick-fix issues at all.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Thank you for saying that. I think it is really important that we help shape people’s expectations. I know that for me, whenever I am speaking to a new group, many people want to hear the aha moment: what was the thing that got you well, or what is the one thing that you do to help people get well in your practice now? The truth is, it took us eight years to find and gather the tools that would actually get me functioning again after six months. That is common for many people. We tell people, Come into our practice; this is at least a six-month project, and your body deserves that time. We care; this needs to be at a pace that is sustainable for you.

Will Cole, DNM, IFMCP, DC

Oh, 100%. I think giving people those tools is at least a guideline; it is not set in stone, but just an awareness of what is at play here. I think people want to know that it may not be music to the ears because, ultimately, we all want that quick fix, but we know it is not real. To be realistic with somebody, I think, is a breath of fresh air for someone who is struggling. At least, that has been my experience with people.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yes. That is a great point. You said something really juicy about the narrow immune-endocrine access today. To encapsulate that correctly, can you dive into the endocrine aspects of that? What do you think are the biggest drivers there?

Will Cole, DNM, IFMCP, DC

Wow. Yes. This is an interesting thing. I just want to put the labs in context. All labs are snapshots in time. I am looking at data points from multiple lab perspectives from that vantage point and then putting those labs in context by knowing how this person is feeling, what they are doing, and all of these things. Over time, you get different snapshots as you lean into protocols. Almost always, when you are looking at these digestive problems and gut health problems, since that is what we are talking about here, a very high percentage of those people have an inflammatory or autoimmune gut health issue. Let me clarify this. Not everybody who has gut health problems has an autoimmune condition, but almost everybody with an autoimmune condition has an underlying gut component to their autoimmunity. You may have just constipation or IBS issues in there and may or may not have an autoimmune component to it, even though there is certainly something called SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth), which is what is causing a lot of people who have IBS and acid reflux issues. I mean, some researchers even consider SIBO to be an autoimmune condition in and of itself. 

Certainly, it has an autoimmune component and is associated with many different autoimmune conditions. But regardless, so I just made it clear with my words and not flippant with my words that, anyway, people that have these digestive and or chronic autoimmune problems have their bodies in a disregulated state, their inflammation levels are higher, and their cortisol level is higher because their body is stressed. Cortisol is an endogenous immunosuppressant. It is a natural anti-inflammatory. The body is trying to create homeostasis in this dysregulated state, and their sympathetic tone is increased; their fighter-flight stress, or freeze-free stress, is increased; and their parasympathetic, resting, digesting hormone balance state is weak. Part of that is what is known as a weak vagal tone or poor vagal tone, which is the largest cranial nerve in the body, the vagus nerve. It is many when you are looking at that avatar of the person. That is really what is going on here. There is part of the protocol for us to improve vagal tone, and there is part of that neuroendocrine axis dysregulation.

When you are looking at vagal tone, being poor, weak, and yet to tone that strength in that weak nerve, that muscle, I do not know. I did a quote for nerve. It is an actual nerve. But I am thinking of a gym analogy in my mind: you would go to the gym and flex the weak muscle that you need to proverbially do for the not-that-non-quotation-mark nerve. The hormones will almost always take a back seat because you will look and measure estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone nine times out of ten, or at least tell telehealth patients that I see very low levels of most, if not all, of those. The one exception would be estrogen-dominant, where there are methylation issues and detoxification is used to prevent the accumulation of a lot of different environmental toxins and estrogen as well. But, even for many people, there are really low levels of it, and the thyroid is a bit sluggish as well, and cortisol levels are sluggish because cortisol is not even able to attenuate in balance as an immunosuppressant. 

As a natural anti-inflammatory, endogenous anti-inflammatory cortisol came in to calm that. In a lot of chronic fatigue syndrome and autoimmune cases, you will actually see very low cortisol, and then most of the time they will say, Well, I do not feel that. I feel like my cortisol should be really high. Well, adrenaline is actually overcompensating for that lack of cortisol rhythm and that more progressed dysregulation. That cortisol dysregulation is a more progressed dysregulation of the endocrine aspect of the neuro-amino kinesis. That is oftentimes the pattern of some of the data points that we see. You will see sluggish hormones across the board, but people will sometimes look at just the downstream aspect of this, and then they will say that if they just looked at the hormones, they would say, Well, I have to go and be on hormone replacement therapy, and they just treat the downstream, which certainly can be palliative or certainly can provide symptom relief, and which certainly is not a lot of our patient protocols. They provide some support there as far as the endocrine aspect, but it is in most cases, when you look at this chronic autoimmune digestive gut health component, it is really hard to have great-looking hormones when there are underlying gut components to why you feel the way that you do. It is going to be, at the very least, an uphill battle to have great-looking hormones. 

There are underlying problems going on here. Hormonal imbalances do not happen in a vacuum. In my experience, you are going to have a lot more of an impact on hormone balance when you go upstream from those hormonal dysregulations. Those exceptions to that—I mean, perimenopause is a good exception to that. There are exceptions to that rule. But ultimately, you have to go upstream from those hormonal problems, and the hormones are biochemical emails that go between systems of the body. If the systems are not communicating properly because of that dysregulation, emails are not going to be sent appropriately. You have to look at why the emails are being sent in the first place. Why are they being sent in balance in the first place? Then go there, and then the hormones Then the emails will be sent better when the systems are talking better.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Such a great analogy. It really is. I love that it is. I think it gives an even better visual than talking about the endocrine system as the slow nervous system, because what does that even mean? This is really interesting. I think you really want to underscore a couple of things that you said. One is that hormone replacement therapy is, by nature, palliative. You are plugging holes, and you may still end up playing whack-a-mole with symptoms, but you know how important it is to go upstream and look at those underlying factors. Then you also talked about the vagus nerve, which I really want to pause for a second here before we get back into more endocrine stuff, before we get too far away from this, and give you a chance to share with the audience your favorite tools for getting back into a parasympathetic dominance state when you may have been in that dysregulated, sympathetic overdrive for quite some time. What do you see working for people who have been out of work for a while?

Will Cole, DNM, IFMCP, DC

I mean, the tool to strengthen the vagus nerve is the one you can be consistent with. Just  so many things. It is working out, right? That is why I used that really poor analogy. Then try to explain when we meet: Okay, what is the best type of workout? What is the one you can be consistent with? That is not too much or too aggressive, but it loves you back, and you are seeing it as being consistent. There is not a path that I am on; all right, this is what everybody should do. This is the magic: vagus nerve strength, because if you do it, this is unsustainable and unrealistic. He does not like it. If you are stressed about it, it is not going to work for you. But I would say there are some low-hanging fruits of what I see working for a lot of people. Breathwork, is at the top of my list, and just consistent breath work and the people and part of that, is meditation. Mindfulness meditation and breathwork are huge, and they are almost foundational. You have to at least start there and find the right one that works for you. The other thing is that people are saying, Oh, it is not right for me. Or, I hated that. Well, there are many different ways of doing that, with mindfulness meditation and breathwork being two separate things. But part of the same mindfulness act is that, because they are anchors in the present moment, they are rooting you in your body; they are getting you out of your head in that frenetic state and into your body.

They are literally strengthening that vagal tone and strengthening that weak aspect of that gut-brain axis. and the people who typically say they are not, it is not for them. It’s typically the people who need it the most. Because their bodies are so disregulated that it is scary. It is that being in your body is scary, and being alone with your thoughts can be scary. start off low and slow. There are certainly trauma responses that should be avoided. Be gentle with your body, and do not rush through these things. Sometimes it is better to have a teacher for these practices if you do have a higher score and more childhood trauma, sexual trauma, physical abuse, and that stuff. But I think breathwork and meditation are very foundational from here and in other practices; I think somatic practices are a part of that. I think other movement medicines can be very helpful here to metabolize stored trauma in the body, and we see a lot of success with EMDR as well, which is eye movement desensitization reprocessing, which is a type of therapy that can really work in the same vein. Those would be my top picks. Then there are devices—those vagus nerve devices—that I think could be supportive tools, but they are not, in my opinion, a replacement for the things I just mentioned.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yes. I completely agree. Breathworkwise, say just to choose that as one example because it’s low-hanging fruit and it is free. There are tutorials online that you can pick up quickly. Say somebody starts integrating that into their health journey and into their daily protocol. What shifts can they expect to see, support-wise,  in their gut health if that is paired with the right protocol for them?

Will Cole, DNM, IFMCP, DC

Well, I mean, I think what I would say is that I see so many people who do all the physiological stuff—they do the nutrition, they do the supplements, and they do the exercise. They are cleaning up their lives on the gut side of gut feelings crosstalk, and that bidirectional relationship they have improved, but I would call it an uphill battle for them. There are ups and downs, and healing is nonlinear for anybody, even for people who have it all together. But even I have said that it is a little bit more of a, let us just say, lovingly clunky start. They are seeing wins. But it is definitely a journey for the people until they are ready. As we know, they plan. These things really are on for telehealth patients, and they will tell us, I am not ready for that right now, or they are flirting with the idea, but they are not really leaning into it; they deal with the physiological stuff; they are following the physiological protocol clearly, and they are seeing big wins, but they are just flirting with the mind-body stuff. But when I see them being really consistent with the breathwork and showing up every night for a meal, I call them metaphysical meals to patients because you have to treat them to breakfast, lunch, and dinner because it is not just about what you are feeding your body or supplements you are taking. What are we feeding our heads into her heart on a daily basis? These are things that are deeply ingrained, stored in our cells in neural pathways that need to be retrained. It is akin to going to the gym once in a while and expecting results. Know that the vagus nerve is freaking weak. We need to strengthen that, and it is going to take time to tone that down. Treat it as you would a gym. How am I going to see results in the gym? It’s not doing it every once in a while. For 5 minutes. It is not. It is going to be consistent over time. With the people that are consistent with it, man, all the clunkiness tends to go away dramatically. I see food sensitivities dramatically calming down in terms of severity and frequency. I see flare-ups decreasing dramatically. As far as frequency and intensity, when they are fit, when they are marrying both the gut and the feelings together, then a lot happens more effortlessly. Now I am not. I am making it, but it’s not really pretty. That is the truth for most people. But that does not mean they do not have any problems either. It just comes. There are a lot of aha moments when people marry the two.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yes. I appreciate you setting those expectations. I think that is so important. There are going to be ups and downs in a health journey. You said that healing is not linear. Sometimes it is two steps forward, three steps back. In fact, that is often the case when the body releases in waves. It is peeling an onion, dude. It is, Oh, my God, I feel, similarly, oops, there are infections coming up because the immune system can finally see them. There are so many layers to this. Say you get somebody on the right diet for them that you have really tailored to their issues, and they are doing vagus nerve work. You have assessed their labs, and you feel you are treating their underlying root causes. What are the additional layers in a protocol to meet their needs to really resolve those long-lasting conditions, obviously, but also those downstream hormonal issues as well?

Will Cole, DNM, IFMCP, DC

Yes. You are saying other aspects to protocols that we lean into.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

What are the other pillars in your in your work?

Will Cole, DNM, IFMCP, DC

Well, food is huge. I mean, we touched on it a little bit, but I will say this: I think that goes back to what I was saying about plan B as far as food is concerned. If I knew something based on lab data, clinical experience, and someone’s health history, this would be the fastest route. Or at least I have a good, really educated guess that this is going to be a great food intervention for them and an integration into a natural medicine protocol for them. But there is a lot of stress and anxiety around it. We would move to more of a pragmatic plan B, and they are consistent with that. But I would say regardless, no matter what their food protocol ends up looking like, what I want to say to that, to the people that I find to be very successful, is that what serves you now is not necessarily what you are going to do for the rest of your life. I think a lot of times people get set in stone and think, This is my thing. I think that whether you are doing this on your own or with a practitioner, I would just say, Do not get overly identified and married to a one way of doing things. It’s okay to evolve; it’s okay to pivot. You should evolve and pivot. If you are dealing with digestive problems or just looking to feel better, you are going to change your life. Your microbiome is going to change over time. I think that is a huge thing that people get overly identified with. One thing, and this is my thing. When that thing does not work or ends up being obsolete, it is okay to evolve out of it. I just think that there should be flexibility. I think there should be grace and lightness to this and an evolution to it. When you’re talking about therapeutically rehabbing somebody’s gut health or any aspect of their physical health.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yes, I think that is really well said. We talk about it in terms of food filters, and you may have to rotate through some of them. You may have three food filters stacked for a period of time, and then you can take one off. For people with autoimmune issues, we often put them on a lectern-free program because they could be really healthy, which could mean vegan, paleo, keto, carnivore, or whatever it is. But then they could be, well, not on carnivores but accidentally leaning on things like nightshades, which are extremely inflammatory to 80% of the population. It is. Why are we letting us just remove that piece and stop irritating the gut lining and start making the blood sticky, deliver some nutrients, and then you can reintroduce them later? The point is never to induce, for sure. It’s to your point; I am so glad you called that out early on in our interview. It really comes down to: what is the most pragmatic, simple approach to healing quickly so that you can get your life back up again?

Will Cole, DNM, IFMCP, DC

Yep, 100%.  I mean, that is why the mind-body connection is so important in that way. Because you could have a great… What is the meaning of the protocol? The natural matter protocol, the supplement protocol, or the food protocol. But if there is a lot of stress, shame, anxiety, or orthorexia energy, for lack of it, they may not even be diagnosed with orthorexia, but there are these tendencies, and they are at least on that orthorexia spectrum of an unhealthy relationship with food and an unhealthy relationship with their body and health. I get it when there is a flare-up associated with food, and I understand that you never want to feel that again. Then you start feeling like food is your enemy. In many ways, without immunity, your body is literally attacking itself. It is understandable that all of this I get it. But it is you. We need to start to heal that relationship again by just letting your body know that you are with it. It does not have to be. I think of what is happening on a cellular level as molecular mimicry and the immune system. The researchers actually said the immune system lost recognition of itself. I think that is happening on a physiological level. But how much of that is also happening on a mental, emotional, and spiritual level? How many people have lost their sense of self? It is this sh*t, for lack of better words, of what is up and what is down. It’s tough to figure that out, but to start to heal their relationship with food and their relationship with themselves is huge. Yes.  It is not easy to repeat myself. It is certainly not linear, and you do not have to have it all figured out. I think maybe that is just another really big clinical profile. Sometimes people get paralyzed by analysis, and they are the summit junkies. They accumulate knowledge, and they think, I have to figure out the key before I do anything. But sometimes there is no key. The key is being consistent with the simple stuff. The key is doing what you have. What is the next great thing that you can do to let her love you back? I think that is huge because we have an epidemic problem. I think of information gatherers in many ways, where they feel they have to have all of this stuff before they do anything. It is really keeping them from getting healthy. You do not have to have it all figured out to feel good.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yes. Huge words of wisdom right there for my beloved gluten free yogis who are doing everything right and still feeling crap.

Will Cole, DNM, IFMCP, DC

Try less is more in many ways. Just  keep it simple. It is  that, keep it simple. Still be  back in school. Yes that we are not to be stupid, but what I mean? For all of us, we all sick.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

We have undervalued or overly obsessed, accidentally navigating away from.

Will Cole, DNM, IFMCP, DC

Yes.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Awesome. I would love to give you a chance to educate the practitioners as we wrap up here and tie this all back together. What are your favorite functional labs to run that you think are critical for people in this population today who are really looking to reverse their chronic, complex gut conditions? What are those key markers within those labs that you really look at first?

Will Cole, DNM, IFMCP, DC

Yes, I go back to what I said earlier about our health history, because I really feel one of the critiques we can get in functional medicine is that we run a lot of labs and look at anything that is relative. It is, well, there probably is a middle ground. Well, anyway, they are trained in the standard model of care to diagnose the disease and match it with medication. It is superfluous to run extraneous labs if the end results are going to be the same medication they are going to give you. But on the flip side, it is not going to run every lab under the sun if it is not going to actually determine what we do. I think health history is really the nugget here: as a clinician, you need to have confidence in balancing the science and art of how to be insightful while also moving the needle. We are going to be insightful but also formative in the development of protocols. I think that those are important. If you want to look at specific numbers for labs, I think getting inflammation labs if you are not doing that is basic. But if you want to, I would definitely run the high-sensitivity C-reactive protein marker. Now, look, a lot of people that have it—it is different—also have colitis in Crohn’s and rheumatoid arthritis. The more overtly inflammatory flare-ups there are, the more you may see hs-CRP being elevated, and you should run it. But I will say that there are a lot of mycotoxins, biotoxin issues, and chronic lyme disease. You will not actually see hs-CRP being elevated. I think you should run it, and it is good to get someone who is spiked to compare and contrast whether what you’re doing is effective or not. But also, I would look at these more expanded inflammatory panels, CD 57, TGF beta 1, c3a, c4a, and these immune markers; you are going to find those off more with this larger biotoxin umbrella that we see a lot because we see a high percentage of people that have different human leukocyte antigens and gene variance haplotypes that are more sensitive to bacterial toxins, more sensitive to viral toxins, and more sensitive to mold toxins that are causing digestive problems, which we did not get into. 

But I see a lot of people that have really stubborn gut health problems like SIBO bloating, IBS issues, and leaky gut syndrome that are not getting better because they are living in a toxic home, because they are living in a moldy home, or because they are exposed to glyphosate or some environmental toxin that is not food. You have to get the environmental and biotoxins out because those things are decreasing. My grading motor complex, those things are decreasing the gut-brain axis and that vagus nerve being weak, allowing this overgrowth to happen. until you deal with these larger biotoxin issues. So you have to look at the bigger context. I guess that is what I am trying to say, which is based on health history, but inflammation tests are a good place to start and then look at what is causing the inflammation. That is when you look into the biotoxin and environmental toxin components of it. For many people looking at the landscape of the microbiome as far as gut health tests and then looking at the things you cannot always quantify on labs, you just get it when the person gets it; when you talk and ask questions, you get it. When you are curious and you have things like the ACE questionnaire where you can look at their childhood, you can look at their life and understand that it cannot always be quantified in the lab. Sometimes it is going to be this chronic stress—this job that they have, this toxic relationship they have, or this unresolved trauma from the past that they have—that you will see the effects of on their labs. But you are not going to actually see the trauma. You are not going to see it as a number on their labs. But it is impacting their labs tremendously.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

Yes. What a great overview of the factors that we need to be considering with anybody coming into our practice today. Thank you so much, Dr. Will. Do you have any last words of wisdom you want to impart to our summit audience today based on what we covered?

Will Cole, DNM, IFMCP, DC

No, I mean, thanks for the opportunity. I mean, if people are interested in what we do at the telehealth center here, everything is at drwillcole.com. I mean, there are lots of free resources there and podcasts there, and you mentioned The Art of Being Well. I have a few books out. The newest one’s called Gut Feelings. Honestly, thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it.

Sinclair Kennally, CNHP, CNC

It is our pleasure. Everybody go check out Dr. Will and make sure that you are following him. He provides just phenomenal free resources for everybody. Thanks so much for joining us today.