Your Gut’s Role In Blood Pressure Balance

James Marin, RD, EN

I’m doing great. I’m excited to get into this topic and educate a lot of folks. Yes, it’s great.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

Fantastic. Well, you’re very good at education. You distill things down and explain well. I’m excited for everyone to understand a few things. Regarding the gut microbiome, it’s a really hot topic, but maybe we can start with: what is the current understanding of the relationship between the gut microbiome and hypertension and cardiovascular health in general?

James Marin, RD, EN

Yes, there’s always this access. I think a lot of us have heard of gut something accessing a gut-brain gut environment. The gut is the nexus of all health on the planet, as we say. When it comes to cardiovascular health and blood pressure, it’s no different, There is a gut nervous system access where we are seeing a lot of solid data and research showing that the gut microbiome and specifically microbes in our gut will affect our blood pressure and, in essence, our nervous system and our stress response to a lot of the things that can happen. We break it down into chemical, physical, and emotional stress. Everything in this world can fall into one of those three categories, which we can expand on. But yes, most definitely, these factors are playing into the gut microbiome, which is then playing into blood pressure, hypertension, and cardiovascular health for sure.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

Can we get into the specifics of how gut bacteria play a role? 

James Marin, RD, EN

Of course. 

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

Maybe it’s the metabolism of compounds or what exactly is going on?

James Marin, RD, EN

There’s nervous system-induced hypertension. This is where your brain is maintaining a high level of pressure in the body. This speaks to the gut microbiome, which creates about 70% of our neurotransmitters. That is one major aspect in and of itself. Where the microbes in your gut are responsible for these neurotransmitters that help regulate everything from appetite to your mood to the pressure systems in your body. Another big aspect of this is what’s called the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. This is fight or flight, but it expands into fight or flight, freeze or fun, There are many layers to this, which we can explore, but it’s how you’re responding to stressors. This can be through your diet; this can be emotional trauma; this could be physical. You just got into a car accident, and you’re, Your heart is racing, your stomach hurts. You’re not thinking about eating a big meal after a car accident. You’re not thinking; I got to use the restroom now. You’re all tensed. You’re tightened up. You’re probably not going to have a bowel movement unless it’s something scary. It may have a bad movement, but typically we’re in this fight or flight response. We are not an arrest and digest. We’re not digesting. We’re not eating. We’re not using the restroom. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take a wolf, a car accident, or much else to put us in that state of mind. It is an email from a boss. It could be an overabundance of desk work, or it could be something happening in the family that stresses us out and almost mimics that response. 

That is, in effect, shaping what studies are showing, shaping the microbiome in your gut, shaping the population in your gut, killing off some of the population while enhancing others.

It’s also going to shape how we eat. Typically when we’re more stressed, and in that fight or flight, the aftereffect is to replenish. It’s typically what we’re finding, especially with the US population: I’m going to replenish with some alcohol; I’m going to replenish with some nice sugary, salty, and crunchy foods. That hit that bliss point, which is an industry term for hyper-palatable food. What that does is elicit a wonderful effect on our nervous system. It gives you just dopamine, which helps counteract that cortisol. Cortisol helps us relieve the stress in our bodies in a fast way, but not necessarily in a healthy way. Then you get that there is a double whammy where you’ve had actions in your life that alter the gut microbiome, and then you follow them up with a quick fix that continues to alter the microbiome negatively, leading you somewhat down a rabbit hole where you’re just digging yourself deeper into the hole.

What we find is that as you continue down these unwanted habits, it becomes harder and harder to pick yourself back up out of that hole. Because as you continue to do damage to your gut microbiome, it’s harder to bounce back from that stress and from that anxiety. This is where we see people who are in a depressive state. It’s your gut microbiome that has been hurt. You’re maybe not doing anything to help it replenish as well as it could. Now, when life stressors come, it’s harder to get back out. This speaks to you not only to depression and anxiety but also to the impact of a hypertensive state on the health of your entire body. Most importantly, the cardiovascular system needs a healthy and specific balance to function properly. I know there’s a lot there.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

I think it speaks to the importance of understanding that there are many layers to a complex disease, especially when it comes to cardiovascular disease. Hypertension is usually the number one killer. If you look at it across the entire world because of what it causes—increased risk of heart attack, stroke, renal health—all these different things. It’s the silent progression of it that’s so deadly. When we get to the microbiome, I find that the mental health piece—the stress anxiety, that parasympathetic sympathetic balance—is such a fascinating topic. Can we speak a little bit to the gut-brain axis? What’s going on—the brain in the gut or speaking to one another? How does that happen? Then what can we do to make it a better environment with our microbiome? Because you said it was difficult to replenish. How do we even start?

James Marin, RD, EN

Yes. That story began with something called the vagus nerve. We do have this very nerve; it’s one of the largest cranial nerves and it resembles a tree root. That’s very symbolic because, in the gut, we’re this inside-out ecosystem where the outer ecosystem resembles our inner ecosystem, which is our gut microbiome. We should have this big tree root that’s coming from the base of our skull into the rest of our body. The gut. This vagus nerve is that superhighway, that connector, that communication. This is where you’ll see people with severe functional GI disorders. One of the treatments; it’s not as common today as it used to be, but you can cut your vagus nerve and just go, Well, hey, your TV’s not working. Let’s unplug it and leave it unplugged. You’re, well, wait a minute; that doesn’t fix my TV or my electrical problems. Just cut the power or the plug. You find, okay, your symptoms are gone, but now you’ve lost this extremely important connection of communication. 

The story is the communication between your brain and your gut. More signals are going from your gut to your brain than from your brain to your gut. As we’ve been learning this over the past two decades, more and more and diving deeper, we’re finding one specific genus that stands out, which is Firmicutes, and the cool thing here to understand is that there’s not one type of genus of microbe that’s bad; even if you think some of the more common ones are commonly known bacteria, it’s E. coli. Or if we think of Klebsiella or these common names that we hear about in the news, that’s not to say let’s kill them all. Let’s just do away with these bad guys that are wreaking havoc and maybe can lead to high blood pressure. In this case, that’s the firmicutes. Where we do find certain strains of Firmicutes that are higher in the gut due to antibiotics, due to poor eating habits, and the list can go on and on with those stressors. That’s not to say. Let’s do away with all the firmicutes. On the flip side of that, the same genus can have species that are beneficial and can also help lower blood pressure. It’s understood that this is a complex ecosystem. Just in the outer ecosystem, rats can be a problem. Rodents can be a problem. But we’re not going to say, Let’s kill all the rodents because they’re food for beneficial animals. They’re themselves able to be cleaners and beneficial to the environment. It’s important to understand that when we’re talking about helping the gut microbiome, we’re talking about helping all of the microbes, even the ones that are bad and good, and helping them find a balance. 

Then the question is, How can we help them find a balance? It is finding that homeostasis, and in the gut, it’s called the eubiosis, where all of these microbes are just happy with one another. They’re helping to balance each other. We’re finding that. The simple version of this is that it’s about adding more food. I know a lot of our patients are hungry. What do you mean, add more food? That’s crazy. Do you want me to eat more? Yes, you can eat more, but it’s eating the types of foods. These types of microbes thrive on resistant starches, on foods that resist digestion and make it to the colon, where most of our microbes are located in our body. When we’re talking about foods, specifically, you’re talking about things like sweet potatoes, you’re talking about definitely well-researched foods that are prebiotic. But all these plant foods are prebiotics in various ways. But we’re talking about the potato category of any purple, sweet white, or yellow potato. You’re talking about other starchy vegetables like carrots or rutabaga. You’re talking about squashes. One of my favorites is Kabocha squash. It’s just a beautiful, nutty, sweet, and starchy squash that you can enjoy and that your microbes love to eat. When you’re eating these colorful, starchy foods, they don’t always have to be starchy. But what’s special about starch is that a lot of it is resistant. It gets to the colon, where it feeds these beneficial microbes. What’s happening then is that the microbes are eating this food. The microbes can be what’s called probiotics, meaning they elicit a beneficial effect. 

That beneficial effect is making a gift that we call postbiotics, which you then absorb in the lumen of your colon and your gut. It then goes into your bloodstream and can have a direct effect on your bloodstream. It can be everything from nitric oxide production. It can even be the epithelial cells of your cardiovascular system. It can be the blood itself or everything in between. Then, to help you in this case, our focus is on talking about hypertension. To have a better basal constriction or dilation of the cardiovascular system. It can help with blood flow; it can help with heart rate. All of these postbiotics are doing amazing things. In this case, we’re talking about the bloodstream and the cardiovascular system to help with blood pressure. Even very much connected to that is the liver and liver health. We’re talking about the huge portal vein that’s connected to the liver and understanding how the liver plays a role. But the surrounding organs in the gut get this diffusion of these postbiotics, which can help with your pancreas and your blood sugar, which can help with your liver, and your portal vein, which can help, as I said, with blood flow, and the list goes on and on. It’s, wow, eating these plant foods. It’s just the diffusion of benefits and postbiotics that flood your body. 

Then we can get into the flip side of that. What happens when you’re devoid of this fiber, this plant food, and the starch? Well, then you’re not getting this diffusion of benefits, right? You’re not getting all these postbiotics. You’re then lacking in nitric oxide and other beneficial B vitamins and phytonutrients. You’re on a deficit, and then your arteries are a little bit harder. They’re not moving; they should. If your veins aren’t moving, you should. Your blood isn’t moving as it should, and your heart isn’t pumping as it should. Unfortunately, if you’re not working with, let’s say, an integrative doctor or dietitian to help you understand this, you’re then given a prescription and go here. Just stay on this and good luck to you. Have a nice day. That’s not the end of the story. That’s the beginning of your symptoms. Okay, I have these symptoms. What are they telling me? Symptoms are your body’s way of speaking to you, and it’s taking time to listen, understand, and then translate those symptoms. That’s where someone like you comes in. Laurie, that’s where an integrative dietician comes in. That’s where we can find a care team that helps us understand our symptoms and get to the root, which is integrative care. 

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

That was a fantastic answer. I want to go down the pathway where you mentioned being devoid of these very beneficial postbiotics. Talk to us about what’s going on in the environment of the colon and the GI system. What are the triggers that cause this dysbiosis or the breakdown of this complex society? What’s the sequelae? Then maybe we can back up, and okay, this is how we can start the repair because I imagine a majority of people listening are probably in a situation where they need to focus on improving their gut health. Can we just maybe walk down, get there, and then back up?

James Marin, RD, EN

Yes, and I know, and we’ve been talking about this for a while, both in this and in our practice of having our dietitians do this one-on-one. I think one of the best analogies I can give is to have a garden. I think a lot of us either have seen a garden, maybe one of you out there watching gardens, or we know someone who gardens. We can relate. I think it’s a perfect analogy where essentially what happens is that it’s a garden that you’ve been mismanaging. Imagine that during the winter, you just see the soil’s bare and it doesn’t have a top cover. The soil is just exposed to the sun and the elements. That’s essentially what happens in our gut. For us, bring it back to us humans. I would say one of the top three things we can do that’s a detriment to our gut garden is leave that soil bare and make sure nothing is growing. Is one not eating enough fiber? We can think of that. Let me just back up quickly and say 95 to 97% of Americans, based on USDA data, are not eating anywhere near the recommended amount of fiber. That’s a large percentage. When we’re not eating enough fiber, we are essentially not composting or adding mulch to our garden. To protect that soil. What ends up happening is that in our gut, the microbes are hungry for fiber. What are they going to eat? They’re going to eat the mucosal layer of your gut. We have this protective layer made out of carbohydrates, essentially fiber, a carbohydrate. So the microbes—man, there’s nothing to eat. We’re not getting fiber. Maybe we’re on a keto diet, we’re on a low-carb diet, or we’re on a carnivore diet. We’re going to eat the mucus. Then we start to eat the mucus and we start to just lose that top layer protection, that opens the floodgates to what’s called leaky gut, gut permeability, or gut hyperpermeability. Then we start to get allergies or intolerances to food because of this leakiness. Then this leaking starts to create an autoimmune response or an immune response in that gut, because underneath our gut lining is a massive immune system network, where we can start to get inflammation, we can start to get a cascade effect into that autonomic nervous system. The list goes on and on and on. You develop an autoimmune disease on top of hypertension, high blood pressure, and issues with your cardiovascular system. 

Going back, you think, when you are exposed to beneficial bacteria and other microbes while your soil is dry, what happens when you throw great seeds? This is usually what people do. Well, I’m just going to take a probiotic supplement. I know I’ve been messed up in my gut. I’ve been on a carnivore keto, so let me just take these probiotic supplements that I found at Costco, Target, or CVS. Well, that’s throwing seeds on your hard, dead soil. What’s going to happen? Or probably a bird is going to come and eat them. Or something. They’re going to, or they’re just going to roll away and blow off in the wind, and nothing’s going to happen. Now you’re spending money on nothing happening, and then you get frustrated, and then you’re wondering if nothing’s working. If we go back and analyze that, well, okay, these are things that are doing a detriment to our gut. You mentioned low fiber. Another one I’ll add is antibiotic use. It’s very similar to the synthetic pesticides and herbicides that we use on our soil. When we spray that, we’re killing vegetation, and we’re killing microbes. When we’re doing that for people, the same thing is happening. We’re losing that diversity. 

Then the third, so again, the top three things you could do that’s hurting your gut are the neurological aspects. In this case, I would probably say that in the US, it’s diabetes. We don’t think of diabetes as being connected with gut damage, but I believe the latest study found that 75% of diabetics have constipation. It makes a lot of sense because we think of diabetics as having neuropathy. They can’t feel their fingers on their toes. You probably know someone like this. Maybe you’re related to this or you’re having issues with it. But, they also have issues with high blood pressure because of this, you’re losing nerve function that happens in the gut as well. One of the biggest nerve clusters is in the gut, outside of the brain. You also get that enteropathy in the gut. You’re killing nerve endings in the gut, leading to constipation, leading to a halt in your gut where things just slow down? A lot of times, people aren’t just having one of those things. It’s all three of those things, and there’s even more. Now we go back to this garden picture, and your soil’s hard and dead. You’re not replacing the compost and mulch, and then you’re not actively trying to help. Your garden is just done.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

I like that analogy. But this gets us to the next point here. I just want to take a quick break here. 

James Marin, RD, EN

Yes, sure. 

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

Everyone, thank you so much for joining us today. If you found this conversation insightful and you want to understand how to repair our gut, you need to stick around, those who are our summit purchasers. But if you’re not a summit purchaser, please feel free to click on the button to the side or below to get access to the rest of the conversation. I’m intrigued to see how we’re going to repair our gut. Now, if you’re watching this, thank you for being a valuable member of our community, and let’s continue the conversation. James, please share with us now: what’s the next step that you were describing? My goodness. There’s so much going on in the gut.

James Marin, RD, EN

There’s so much going on. But, yes, but we go back to the garden analogy and we go, okay, what is the first step to rebuilding the soil? Here’s the good news. The good news is that just if you see an empty, vacant lot. If you just leave it alone, meaning you’re not still removing the fiber, you’re not adding the pesticides and herbicides, which in our case are antibiotics. You don’t even have to actively be there. That is the third point of that neurological issue, in this case of the garden, you can just leave it alone. For the first two, as long as you’re not removing the fiber and you can lay off the antibiotics, think of it as an empty lot. When you leave it alone, it starts to grow some weeds, and you start to see little plants grow. Pretty soon, if you continue to leave it, they get bigger and bigger. Maybe some trees will start to grow. You see insects coming, which brings birds, and then brings coyotes because rabbits are coming because ecosystems are starting to come back. As long as you just take away the inputs that are harming, your gut can come back as well. Again, this is not one-size-fits-all medical advice. There are variables to this, but generally speaking, this is what happens. 

Now, if you also add positive things to that, If we imagine that empty lot or that empty garden now, on top of leaving it alone in terms of not harming, we then start to add compost and mulch. In this case, if you start to slowly increase your fiber intake, maybe you start with something as simple as half a cup of beans or half a cup more of healthy fruit, like dragon fruit or even apples. I tend to prefer more soluble fiber fruits, like dragon fruit, or kiwi. Where it’s slimy, it’s gooey. You can think of chia seeds falling into this category even though they’re not a fruit, okra, which is more of a vegetable and technically a fruit. But there’s this slimy, wonderful, beneficial food that you slowly start to add back in. It starts to feed those microbes, then rebuilds the mucosal layer of the gut, where microbes can thrive and live. You start to essentially repair that leakiness in the gut. Over time, if you just keep doing that, it’s just that you’re planting and seeding that garden. Over time, you start to say, I never knew wildflowers were going to grow this season. Cool. I threw those seeds last season, and they didn’t grow. But this season, wow, there’s corn, there’s watermelon, there’s wildflowers, and there’s herbs. Just as you see the diversity in the garden and all the plants that we have, the same thing happens in the gut. Just in the firmicute, as I mentioned, there are hundreds of species. It doesn’t have to get too complex in terms of, I have to eat all these types of foods. No, especially if you’re starting like the average American in a fiber deficit. It’s as simple as adding one new food a week and then going from there. It can be small, but it starts to ramp up, and it can have massive and massively positive effects on your gut microbiome. 

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

I think that’s great to think about. You’re just stopping doing what’s so harmful. Get out of your way. The body wants to do its thing; let it, and then you can put in some inputs that will be beneficial. Accelerate the growth and repair. But you had mentioned fiber multiple times, which, I think the RDA depends on the men or women, 25 to 35 grams, which I think is an anemic recommendation anyway. But we’re only getting 12 to 15 grams per day in the American population. Can you explain what exactly fiber is in the different types of fiber because you’re exposed to resistant starch-soluble fiber, and can we just understand what that means exactly?

James Marin, RD, EN

Yes, of course. That’s a great question. I love to talk about this because I think we should start calling fiber the essential carbohydrate. Carbohydrate fiber is a carbohydrate, We all know carbs, and there’s a lot of us out there. I said carbs are bad. They’re making me gain weight. I don’t eat carbs, but we should eat carbs. Carbs are great for you, and fiber is a carbohydrate. I call it an essential carbohydrate because we don’t make it in our bodies. Plants make it. We have to get fiber outside of our bodies. Just in the same way, we have essential amino acids and essential fatty acids, meaning we have to get those from our diet; we also have to get fiber from our diet. First off, it’s a carbohydrate that we need from our diet. You’ll find it in every plant food. From beans, peas, and lentils to seeds, nuts, fruits, and vegetables. For the fiber that we need now, there are different types of fiber. There’s soluble fiber, which we can think of as a mop. It’s wet and gooey, and there’s insoluble fiber, which is what makes a broom hard. 

I would describe it that way because they act on those functions in the gut, the insoluble fiber. The broom acts as a broom. It’s sweeping your gut; it’s cleaning; it’s moving things along. It’s more tough and durable, and it’s going to move. It’s not going to get digested very well. Think of corn skin. I think a lot of us can relate to that evidence of going acorn, and I’m seeing corn. It’s not that the skin is not getting digested, but corn is also great because inside is a more soluble, starchy fiber that does get digested and used by us and our microbes. You need both; you need that broom fiber. For many of us, we don’t need it; we can get too much of the brewing fiber. We tend to be, and I need fiber. You go to the store and grab that supplement. I won’t name any name brands, but you grab usually it’s a psyllium husk that’s more the broom, and you can overdo it with that. Now that you’re here, I’m constipated, and my brooms are all stuck together. That’s what you need. Then that mop, where the mop is also just soaking up toxins. It’s also cleaning and helping with movement but in a different way than the broom. That’s going to be Dragon fruits, one of my favorite, kiwi, okra, and chia seeds. There are lots of that; just that sticky, gooey oats can be that where it’s just anything that gives you that gooeyness. 

Then, in between those, you have resistant starches, as I mentioned, and you have other starches that aren’t; they’re carbohydrates. They act somewhat like fiber, but they’re more of what’s called, I said, a resistant starch, where they’re also not getting digested, which can sound like a bad thing. But it’s a benefit because we are mostly microbes. We’re superorganisms, and that means we’re one organism made up of many organisms. In that case, we want to feed these organisms, and we’re feeding the organisms with fiber and resistant starch. If you’ve ever noticed, when you make white rice and you’re cleaning the pot, you put it in, and there’s a hard, sticky film on that white rice or a potato. You notice the potato has a film on it, and you can almost peel it off from the top of your big potato. That is resistant to starch. 

When you eat that, you are essentially feeding a lot of these beneficial microbes that do everything from make you B vitamins to help regulate your blood pressure, keep you calm, and help regulate your nervous system. Yes, this fiber is essential. This fiber is found in plentiful amounts in plants. That’s where, if you start to eat plants, you start to eat more plants. If you start with a broader diversity of plants and can do this slowly, I usually recommend doing what we call low and slow, especially if you’re not used to eating plants. It’s slowly helping to seed and nurture that garden. That’s why I go. That’s why I put that garden out there, and I go back to it because you can expect to harvest your garden the next day. It is a slower process once you start caring for your garden and takes some time. Let some time and some patience happen, and you will then be able to pick fruits and vegetables from your garden. The same is true for your gut garden, essentially.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

Yes, but do we need to be worried about it? We’re growing this special garden of diversity because, as you mentioned, we just leave it alone. Is there anything that we need to be paying attention to or thinking about doing to introduce different types of strains or increase diversity? Is there a benefit to that?

James Marin, RD, EN

Yes. one big recommendation. I’m not going to sit here and say, Never have a probiotic supplement. I think probiotic supplements have their time and place, but they’re safer. I would say a more general option is fermented foods. There’s been wonderful meta-analysis done on fermented foods, showing just how beneficial they are—everything from hypertension to even other neurological issues to diabetes to IBS and Crohn’s disease—showing the benefits across the board. and one of the studies did recommend that, ideally, you’re getting six servings of fermented foods a day, which could seem pretty high to those who aren’t eating fermented foods. The story of fermented foods comes into play, and if you think about it, all of our ancestors ate fermented foods because we didn’t have freezers and refrigerators, we didn’t have vacuum seals, and we didn’t have all these preservatives to keep our food fresh, so we fermented it? 

Our guts that have been passed on and the gut microbiomes that have been passed on to us are used to ferment foods. We are seeing, and there’s some cool research coming out that we’ve been talking to one of our gastroenterologist friends, showing that in a study done with about 500 participants, I believe it was 85%. This is preliminary, but it’ll be out soon. 85% had zero to minimal lactobacillus species. Lactobacillus is one of the most dominant, prominent, and beneficial species in our gut. It helps in so many different ways. To see people who have 0 to 2 extremely low levels is highly alarming. That speaks to the need for many out there to get into Lactobacillus and other beneficial genes and species. You’re going to do that with fermented foods. Some of our fermented foods are great yogurt and fermented yogurt. Kieffer, it could be as easy as adding some of the yogurt to a smoothie and pouring some of the Kieffer into your bowl of cereal. Sauerkraut, pretty much goes on top of any savory dish, whether it’s an Asian Pokeball or you’re doing some type of casserole dish, just throw a little sauerkraut on it or sour cream, I think a lot of people like that. 

Well, I’m Mexican, and you can pretty much throw sour cream on anything. An actual sour cream that isn’t pasteurized and killed to death. We need to then understand: how are we finding healthy fermented foods? They shouldn’t be completely pasteurized where you’re killing off all the microbes; you still get some benefits, but you’re usually finding these in the refrigerated section and finding them that are saying they’re not pasteurized, but they’re maybe they’ve been helped with high-pressure pasteurization, which is a different technique than just heat. They’re still alive, and in the refrigerator, some of them aren’t pasteurized, which is fine, but they’re tested for their microbial levels. A different way to make sure. It’s mostly lactobacillus, which is safe, and it’s going to benefit your body. We could do a whole talk on just fermented foods, but getting those fermented foods in is the key number one tip for sure.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

Perfect in mentioning sour cream, of course, and probably want to focus on the non-dairy type of research. Or some of the others to speak to. We can make this the last question, and I’ve been keeping you longer, but can we talk about dairy? I find that the one thing when I introduce the whole plant-based diet is dairy, it seems to have such a profound effect on the GI system. In this case, if you can speak to that a little bit.

James Marin, RD, EN

Yes, most definitely. One thing I’ll say about the gut microbiome is that it’s one of our primary detoxes. It’s hard to call it an organ, I guess. Some are calling the microbes in our gut and organ systems because they’re so important, which I’ll go with. It’s one of our primary detox organs as well. The number one source of dioxane, which is one of the toxins that we are exposed to, is coming from animal sources of food, primarily dairy. There’s a lot of research that’s being done, and there’s more that’s not being done because we’re not liking what we’re finding. We’re not only finding harsh environmental toxins in dairy, but we’re finding harsh forever chemicals in dairy PCBs and PBDEs. Dairy is hard because we are touting the benefits of dairy. Animal-based dairy or not factoring in. There are also huge detriments to it because it is breast milk. We are getting whatever cow or goat or whatever type of dairy you’re consuming, or whatever type of breast milk you’re consuming. That animal whose mother you’re consuming it from was highly contaminated. You were going to get that in that breast milk. You have to factor that in. On top of the fact that the sugars and other nutrients in dairy are not conducive to most guts. Sure, you could take a lactaid supplement. You could take supplements to help you digest dairy properly. But once you do that, then where are those nutrients going? It usually causes some more stomach upsets, causing dysbiosis in the gut, on top of adding in more environmental toxins that your gut microbes have to detoxify. 

I will speak to the fact that when people say, Well, you have to do raw dairy; don’t get it pasteurized. That’s the problem. They’re killing off all the beneficial microbes in dairy. That doesn’t factor in the fact that one, it’s not your milk. There’s more than just microbes there. There are hormones and there are other nutrients that aren’t conducive to human health. But even if we stick to the microbes, why coconut kefir, cashew kefir, and cashew-based sour cream will still be hugely beneficial in terms of the microbes? Then you don’t have to get it from an actual animal. You’re getting it from a cashew or an almond, You get the benefit without the risk. That’s the name of the game. If I can have less risk and more benefit, why wouldn’t you opt for the healthier plant-based fermented dairy options? It’s a no-brainer. But yes.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

I think this service, and if anyone has an interesting YouTube video just on this, it’s called Dairy Is Scary. Yes. It’s an interesting YouTube video to watch. If you still want to consume cows, look at that. I don’t think you’re human.

James Marin, RD, EN

Is that the only switch for good?

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

No, it’s a different one. It was a YouTuber put together. You have to check it out. Dairy.

James Marin, RD, EN

I had to check it out. Yes. That’s fascinating.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

But yes, it’s just that it’s fascinating. Just on the physician side of things, they teach you. I went to medical school decades ago, and yes, they always teach you when you have children. When you’re taking care of young children, you need to monitor for anemia. The first thing is that if they are anemic, you pull back on their dairy consumption. They sit and think about that. Number one, why are we encouraging this liquid form to grow a cow in a very rapid form—2,000 pounds I think, or something like that? In this first year in children that can cause anemia and the subsequent issues that come with anemia, childhood is a big deal. It’s insane to me.

James Marin, RD, EN

Yes.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

The whole thing.

James Marin, RD, EN

Since you brought that up, I have to say, even the cascade effect that doesn’t end there when dairy hinders iron absorption in the gut or causes that dysbiosis, which is one of the effects of iron absorption. Where does that iron go? Well, it can stay in the lumen. Guess what?  the iron fungus; fungi are the heavy metals. There’s this massive overgrowth and lots of studies backing this up, which is very interesting because we see patients who have this fungal overgrowth and get oral thrush more and more. You have this almost-proliferation of iron in the iron, just staying there. Your body’s always trying to help you. Your fungus is going, well, let me help with this, but it doesn’t seem like a help because then you’re getting just a fungal overgrowth, as this may manifest in different forms and can make you itchy down there. It can also lead to vaginal dysbiosis. It can lead to fungus in and around the skin, especially in the genitals or on the feet. Okay, said that oral thrush, it could be an itchy ear where you’re just making your ears itchy for kids. We see this as a chronic ear infection, so it’s like you’re giving them iron. It’s just not getting to where it needs to go, and then it can cause a cascade of negative effects.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

Yes, I had horrible allergies when I was a kid, and I loved milk. As soon as I went plant-based, within days I had no symptoms of allergies. It has been over 12 years, and I have had maybe occasionally where I go and travel somewhere cool, but then it’s only for a few days and I’m fine. It’s just, Holy Moly,  if I had known.

James Marin, RD, EN

Yes, same.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

Well, thank you, James. I feel we got to continue talking and got an entire dissertation on the gut microbiome, which is fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing your information with us today.

James Marin, RD, EN

Thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed it.