← The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
The Dylan Gemelli Podcast
Episode #69 Featuring Dr. Vincent Pedre! Happy Gut Coffee, Mitochondria, Gut Health, Vagus Nerve, Mind-Body Connection, The importance of breath work, Cellular Membrane Importance and more!
01:04:30
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Foreign.
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Hey, everyone. Dylan Gemelli here today with an extremely exciting announcement. I am now on the Minect app as an expert. That is Patrick Bet, David Zapp. So you can hire me today. You can ask me questions about hormones, peptides, neuroscience, science, cardiology, cellular health, finances, faith, religion, whatever it may be. I am there. You can book me for your podcast and you can also apply to be on mine. But go over, download the Manect app, find Ylan Gemelli. I will answer either by audio, by text, you can get video responses, you can even book a phone call with me. I'm extremely excited to be available to work with all of you and I thank you all for your support. So check me out on Manect today. Today's episode is sponsored by my good friends at Timeline. Timeline is now offering the world's first ever longevity gummies, powered by Might Appear. You've heard me talk about the importance of cellular health and our mitochondria, which is why I have Timeline as my favorite and most trusted sponsor. These are the only clinically proven Urolithin a gummies for strength and healthy aging. We may be living longer lifespans, but are we truly living better lives? What if the key is not just adding years to your life, but life to your years?
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This all starts at the cellular level.
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As we age, our mitochondrial health starts to decline. And one of the keys to living longer and healthier is keeping our mitochondria healthy and strong and might appear targets. This for us. Take control of your health now and live the life that you not only desire, but you also deserve. As a gift to all my listeners, you can save 20% off today by going to timeline.combackslash Dylan to get started. That's timeline.combackslash Dylan. I assure you your cells will thank you. All right, everybody, welcome back to the Dylan Gelli Podcast on set. I am over the moon about my guest today and I'm going to tell you why. But first, I want to list some of his credentials because he's known for his company. But I think that you're going to be in awe of the knowledge that he has. And we're going to dig into every aspect that I can. I'm going to drain him this hour that I here. So he's a board certified internist. He's a functional medicine expert. He's well known for, you know, doing so many different types of specialties, whether it be gut health, gut brain optimization. We're going to talk about cellular health with him today. We're going to overcome some of the different issues I've seen out there on mitochondrial discussion, we're going to do it all. And I can't wait to get into all of that. He's got some tremendous books that, as you can see, featured right here, if you're on video, that I've got sitting out in front of me. Gut Smart Protocol, Happy Gut. I would highly, highly urge you to watch these. But he's also the founder of Happy Gut Coffee, which I will get into in just a minute. But my friends welcome Vincent Pedri, M.D.
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I'M stoked to be here, man.
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Thank you so much for being here. Ever since I met you, brother, like, I knew there was something good about you. I. For people listening, I, I met Vincent kind of on accident, really, at. It was at Hos in Austin at the, the biohacking convention. And I, I just happened to be going by, and I am a coffee snob and saw it, I thought, well, let's give it a shot. I try all of these and I go in there kind of even tempered. I, you know, there's. Everybody makes promises and I. He's the gold standard for my coffee drinking, literally. I told him the other day, I said, brother, I said, I, I want to make your day today. I said, I try all of these different coffees. I, I get approached by people that want me to try them, and I have to compare them to yours, and they always fail.
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Don't let Dave Asprey know that.
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I'm sorry. I love you, Dave, and I love your coffee. It's second on my list. But it's just, there's something about what you've done here. So we're going to get into all of that. But thanks again for coming to see me. I know it's not easy to just get up and fly and leave, and you did right away. And I just really appreciate it a hundred percent.
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100. I would do it a thousand times for you.
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I appreciate it, brother. Well, let's, let's dig in. You know, I know you're known for the coffee. We're going to get into coffee because I want to talk about health benefits and different aspects of coffee, but I want to get in more to what you do and focus on because you do a lot. You put out a lot of content. You talk about a lot of different aspects of health. You're not a coffee guy by any stretch. You're a genius. And so I want to talk about all of those things that you get into. So let's start with this. What are Some of your key areas of expertise that you like to focus on that you feel are the most important for our health and longevity.
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Oh, man. The gut is the foundation, right? Like, I've been preaching that for over 10 years. The gut is like the root system of our tree. If the art body is like a tree, the roots are what make the tree healthy or make the tree sick. And for us, it's a digestive system. The truth is though, like, I'm now starting to dial back and look, well, what's behind even that. And if you start pulling back the curtain and looking behind that, you know what you find is mitochondria and cellular health. And it's behind everything, including the health of the gut lining. And then that determines everything else. Because if your gut is not well, then you're not going to break down protein. You're not going to absorb amino acids, you're not going to be able to build muscle tissue. And we know that muscle is longevity. But you can't have muscle if you're not breaking down protein and absorbing those amino acids. It's something that I see over and over. And it's not that I'm trying to be like, hey, the gut first, then muscle, right? But if you want muscle, then you need a healthy gut. Like, I, I struggled to put on muscle weight for most of my life. That was. I used to get made fun of for being skinny when I was in high school. And that's when my gut issues started.
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Okay.
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I had been on 20 plus rounds of antibiotics. I had developed sensitivities to gluten, dairy, but I didn't know this. I was having cereal with milk in the morning. I was having sandwiches, pizza, pasta, cheese. I was eating all the wrong things, eating like 3 to 4,000 calories a day. But I was rail thin because my body could not absorb anything. And it wasn't until I started fixing my gut initially. Sometimes when you fix your gut, like you're taking out inflammatory foods, like, like people who are sensitive to gluten. For example, gluten absorbs a lot of water with it. It's very hydrophilic. So someone who is eating lots of bread, pasta, et cetera, and is sensitive to it, they're going to be puffy, right? You know, their face is going to be puffy. So you might actually lose weight initially as you're healing your gut and it's really water weight, like you're becoming less puffy. But then my goal was to build muscle, and that took a bit longer because I had to heal and seal those tight junctions. But what I didn't realize is that my high stress lifestyle had shut off my vagus nerve and I just didn't break down protein. So when I started taking a digestive enzyme, increasing protein, because also, like, we all think we're eating enough protein and most of us do not get enough protein. But it doesn't matter if you're getting 150 grams of protein, if your stomach doesn't have the digestive power to break that protein down so that you can get the amino acids. So when I introduced the digestive enzyme, I was able to start packing on muscle weight for the first time in my life. So it's been, it's been a long journey. And a lot of the stuff that I've become interested in has been things that were related to my own personal health. Journey started with the gut because I suffered from so many gut issues as a child going into my 20s. Started getting skin rashes, eczema, lots of brain fog. Turned out the brain fog was actually the wheat. The gluten really was causing the brain fog. And when I cut out the wheat, my brain started sharpening. Then fast forward, you know, this is like I'm in my mid-30s when I went through this whole thing, cutting out gluten, fixing my gut microbiome, learning about the microbiome for the first time. Because they didn't teach us that in medical school. It's almost like they didn't teach us the most essential things that we need for our health. In medical school. They taught us how to prescribe drugs, right. Basically. And then they threw out all the biochemistry with it. And they're like, just give people these drugs fast forward, you know, and as you become older, then you start becoming more interested in longevity. And if you're interested in longevity, then you need to understand mitochondria, right? Because mitochondria are determining the, the health of the cell. So it's even become, you know, going even more granular because the gut is the foundation. You know, if you're building a house, you don't build a house without a foundation. If you're building your health, you bypass the gut, you have a very weak foundation. That house is gonna come crumbling down at some point. But if you go granular, you see that behind that mitochondria and cellular health, right?
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So I always say that disease, I mean, inflammation obviously is a big cause of all the disease, but I say it kind of starts and ends in the cells. And people don't really think about that, then you look deeper and it's mitochondria health and people. I think that it's not really discussed aside from like in our communities and more in detailed biohacking communities. But you go to regular doctors or practitioners, they don't really talk about anything cellular or anything like that. And they don't ask you about your diet very well.
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They've forgotten about that. And, and they've forgotten about redox science and how important it is to actually. That every cell is like a battery. And that battery is healthiest when it's at negative 70 to 90 millivolts. And as you age, you get sicker, you start getting more oxidation inside. The cell starts to break down. That, that battery starts to drop. Yeah. And it starts dropping into the 40s, then the 30s, then 15. And that's where you start getting autoimmunity cancer. Know all sorts of disruption because your DNA can't be expressed properly when the cell voltage is off. Yeah. And who's controlling the cell voltage? The mitochondria. Right.
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And. And I, I can't remember who it was I was talking to. I said, how many, how many my cells do we have in our body? I mean, it's just, it's such an insane amount. I mean, it was like trillions. Right. And then you start to think about that. And if you're having cellular issues, I mean, think about how many are within you and the function and control that they have. And I'm, I'm with you because I have talked to so many people now I'm privy to that information that I see what they're teaching them in school. And so I don't really blame the doctors because they're just doing what they're taught and what they're told. And if you're paying hundreds of thousand dollars to go to school and that's what you're being told, what are you supposed to think?
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There's also so much to cover. Yeah. That it, it took me having that foundation, but then it took me going the next level and always asking, well, what else? Yeah. What am I missing? Where is the truth here? You know, because the truth can't be that we're just pumping people with drugs and just telling them, keep eating your pizza, keep eating your fries, keep having those omega 6 oils. Like that can't be the truth.
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No. I was in the hospital a few months ago and there was a Heart Healthy menu. And if you would have seen what was on this Heart Healthy menu, I, I looked at my wife and I was Laying there. And I said, is this reality? It's a chicken parmesan, tortellini, margarine, dinner rolls. This is all on the heart healthy menu. I am not lying. I took snapshots of it.
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It's crazy.
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And I was completely just blown away by what they would even say is heart healthy and then give to patients that were in there. I was in the cardiology area, you know, when this happened, when I had an episode. And I thought, good thing I know what I'm doing, you know, and I'm having them bring me in salmon and foods and my own things and things to eat that were actually heart healthy. But, you know, why, why is it, do you feel when you go to the doctor, they come up with this term idiopathic? And to me, it's like when they say that, that means we really don't know. But they don't dig and they don't look for anything. They don't test for heavy metals, toxins, they don't look at cellular health. They don't look at anything. They don't look at the gut.
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What they're saying is that I don't have a language for this.
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Okay.
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It's outside of the scope of the tools that we have, you know, because what I tell patients is you're not going to find what you're not what you don't look for. Right. So if you don't look for heavy metals that are hidden in your body, you're not going to find them. Right. But you may do a blood count, you may do liver, kidney function, and they might all look normal. And what really partly inspired me in my career other than like really amazing thought leaders from back in the 90s like Deepak Chopra and De Weil, Mark Hyman was really being able to, not, not feeling satisfied with saying that this is idiopathic. Yeah. Like wanting to know, well, is it really? Or is there something else going on here? Is there something that we're missing? And I don't know, I'm, I don't know where that came from. I, I, I was thinking recently, like, where does my contrarian thinking come from? I really think it's my dad.
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Yeah.
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My dad was not a doctor. He was an engineer. He questioned everything, even including politics. He questioned the stories that we were told. He even had a book, I remember, called Contrarian Investing, like How to Invest in the Stock Market in a Way that most People don't. So I think that trickled into me and my upbringing and made me a contrarian doctor looking for the things that most people aren't looking. And really, functional medicine is looking at the stones that were left unturned by others. And because I tend to see people downstream after they've been to four, five, seven doctors, I have the benefit of learning. And this is what I've been doing for years, is listening very carefully and learning from what all the other doctors did that didn't solve the problem. So then I have to ask, what else. What else is going on here that they didn't think of?
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I find it strange, troubling, intriguing, that the people that most. Anybody. If you ask who's the smartest person that you've ever heard of or thought of? Most people say something like Einstein. You get some people that know philosophers or everything. They'll bring up other people that are philosophers. I don't know Socrates. I'm not a big philosopher. I don't know. But I do know that they're going to be bringing up names like that. What did. And then I say to myself, what separates them from everybody else that we know? They questioned everything. They questioned anything and everything. And that's how they figured out new things. Just like when we develop technologies, don't you think when we went from VCR to DVD to Blu Ray, there were a lot of questions asked as to how can we fix this or do this? There's got to be a way or a mechanism.
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And what really distinguished them, which Robert Greene wrote in his book Mastery, was that when they hit an obstacle, something that where humanity hadn't gone before and something hadn't been thought that way, they didn't stop. Right. They continued asking the question, figuring it out. Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Isaac Newton, you know, all of those thought leaders, the commonality is that they didn't stop when they hit the obstacle. They kept looking.
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Because there has to be another way. There always has to be different ways. There's cures for everything. They're out there.
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We're seeing it. Like, look at where medical knowledge. Knowledge is now, like advanced medical knowledge in the functional medicine realm, but also the science, like where it is today compared to where it was 20 years ago.
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Huge.
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Oh, yeah, jump. Huge jump. And yet at the same time, like, when I think about, like, where things are jumping to, you know, like with biohackers and. And all the things that we're doing, we're. We're losing a little bit of the details in place of, you know, the shiny objects. Yeah, right. And then not realizing. And this is. This is what I love, that I still see patients because if there's something that patients do for you is they keep you humble and they keep you connected to the pulse of what it really takes to make somebody healthy. Because what makes, what it takes to make you healthy will be slightly different than what it takes to make the next person healthy and the next person. It's not a one size fits all. Even though we can make some big generalities, like, hey, like, don't eat crap food, don't eat processed foods. Yeah, let's start there. That's the basics. But then there's all these little details that when you, when, because I work with people who are pretty sick, you start realizing, like, okay, what worked great for this person is not working for this person. So I've got to restructure, like refine, like, how is it that I need to approach this case slightly differently because they're not responding in the, the way I would expect them to.
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You can ask my wife this and anybody that else that's ever around me a lot. One of the key things and factors when I know I'm talking to somebody of intelligence is one of the first things that they say is that just because it works for you does not necessarily mean it's going to work for the next. There are so many different things that fall into that. Whether it's age, whether it's family history, allergies. I mean, you could go down a list of a million things and that as a good doctor or as a good practitioner, health coach, whatever, it is your job to ask the proper questions and to know the needs and necessities of who you're working with. And the people that do this, they're either stuck in their ways, they have this one set mentality and that. You even see it with diets. You know, whether it's the keto people, the carnivore people, the high carb people, and they argue and they fight and they make it this big thing and then they start calling each other names. I mean, it's, it's absolutely insane. And it's. To me, it is one of those things that continues to be polarized. It doesn't help anybody. What helps people are the people like you that are willing to say, hey, it might be a little different for you, it might be a little bit different for you. Let's look, let's find, let's figure it out. Let's work on this. Everything in life is trial and error. I don't care.
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It is. It is.
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From the moment you're born to the moment you die, it's trial and error.
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We're making educated guesses. Yes. And the thing that someone like me brings to the table is that I've had a lot of experience. I've seen all the ways that things can go. I've seen when they don't go so well.
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Yeah.
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But even then, like, we're still working with a chaotic system, that chaotic system being your body. The human body is like this incredible quantum force with like, an ecosystem that is operating in ways that sometimes you can't fully predict because there are many influences on what is creating the outer picture of health that we are seeing in a person or on wellness.
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One of the things I'm focusing on right now that you've brought up a little bit earlier we talked about off camera, is the mind body connection and that correlation to build full health. Because I feel like. And I. I've said this multiple times, and I think I told you this too, that I spent so many years focusing on the fitness side, the nutrition side, the things that I was really into, which, of course, I mean, that's one of the key halves here. But I totally just left out the correlation and the importance of the mind, the neuroscience side of it, and how that really is the other aspect of. Now we've got the. The true foundation for our health. There's going to be things along the way that we got to address that are going to be down the line of importance that are all highly important. But if you're not optimized in that regard, I don't think you can really do much of anything else in totality. You know what I mean? If. If, just like you were saying, well, if your gut's having issues, you're not going to be able to build the muscle. Right. But. And the foundation.
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But if you don't believe that making these changes are going to help you, so it's bottom up, top, bottom down, you don't believe that this is gonna help you. And that's not worth, you know, doing the sacrifices, putting in the work. Then nothing's gonna work.
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Right.
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So mind body connection. I mean, we know from this book, Molecules of Emotion, that our white blood cells have neurotransmitter receptors, so they can feel our thoughts. So we are controlling even how our immune system is behaving. We know that people with a positive mental attitude have better outcomes when it comes to cancer treatments than ones that don't. Right. So there's. There's something there. And whenever I'm working with people, and I've written about it in Both of my books, like in my first book, it was a 20 day gut reset. And as part of that, I tell people I want you to journal and you're going to write a daily gratitude. We know that people who write a daily gratitude, like when you write down what you're grateful for on a daily basis, it creates a greater sense of positivity and that then translates to better health in general. Then think about the work of Masuru emoto. We are 70% water. Masuru emoto studied. He was a Japanese scientist who studied the effects of what happens if you take a glass of water and you project an emotion to that water and then you instantly freeze it in that moment. And you look at the crystals that form he got. And this was repeated over and over, like over multiple experiments. And they still have. He passed away, but they still have the institute in Japan. When the water received love and gratitude, it formed the most beautiful crystals, the most ornate crystals. If the water had anger projected at it, the crystals became disordered, they broke down. They were, they didn't have all the nice like edges and shape that you see like in a snowflake. And he did this over and over. Well, what are we holding in our bodies? You know, Are you holding gratitude, love, or are you holding a lot of anger, resentment? And I think you can't, you can't separate the two. And I've never seen them as separate. Like when, when someone is coming in and working with me, we're working at the physical level, but very early on I'm already paying very close attention to the words that they use, their attitude. Like your words create your reality.
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Yep.
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Right. If you're speaking a lot of negative words, if you're speaking words of doubt, then that's the reality that you're creating. And that's something that I've, I've tried to impart on. My son is teaching him the power of words. Because those words are what you are holding in your field and then that's what you project outwards. But then it's, it's affecting things like the Vagus nerve.
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Yeah, I want to hear about that because I, I've started to study that and learn more about the actual effects that has on everything. And it's kind of been mind blowing to me on what exactly it does and controls. Would you just mind kind of giving like a simple breakdown first of, of what it even is and then like the power that it has over our health and our, our minds and everything that we do. I, I really want like a Nice little detailed synopsis from you of that, please.
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I talk a lot about it in my second book, the Gut Smart Protocol. I always put into my books the things that I feel that I want people to do, though. People always want, well, what's the diet? What do I do to fix myself physically? And then the other stuff is always kind of like an addition to, like, meditation, mindfulness, breath work, all of that. The vagus nerve is kind of like that interface between the mind, the body, and the breath. It starts in the brain stem and it goes all the way down across the neck. Vagus comes from Latin meaning lazy, because it is the longest nerve in the body, like a lazy river. And it innervates every single organ underneath the neck. So the lungs, the heart, the intestine, the spleen, the liver, all of that is innervated by the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is controlling things like heart rate variability, and it's controlling it by how balanced your sympathetic drive is with your parasympathetic drive. And it actually has two branches. This is a really interesting part to the vagus, is it has a primitive branch. It's called the dorsal vagus. So when we're talking about vagus, like when. Usually when I'm talking about the vagus nerve, I'm talking about the ventral branch that is innervating the heart, the lungs, the intestines. But then you have a dorsal branch which is more connected to the reptilian part of the brain. And that's that part that we call the freeze response. Okay, so you fight flight or you freeze. Well, freeze is not a sympathetic response. It's actually a vagal response. It's the primitive vagus, and that's the deactivated vagus. So that's when you don't want to get out of bed, you're depressed, your mood is low. We know from studies that they've done vagal nerve stimulation on treatment. Resistant depression patients who were on failed two drugs and they did vagal nerve stimulation, 37% of those recovered. Wow. Just by reactivating the vagus nerve. So stuff like that tells you within 30 minutes of a traumatic brain injury, if you're in an accident, you could get your head hit, vagus nerve shuts off, and you get leaky gut because we need those impulses. So I. So vagus is another one where you've got top down, and you've got down up. So top down, sending an impulse. We call it the vagal tone. And that's almost like telling your body, like, hey, everything's okay, you can chillax. It's kind of like, I don't know if you. You go back to when we actually had landline phones that had a dial tone. Oh, yeah, yeah. So it's kind of like that dial tone when you picked up the phone.
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Yeah.
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It's telling your body everything's okay. Like, keep making stomach acid, keep moving food down the digestive tract, keep those tight junctions intact, because partly that's dependent on the vagus. But the other direction is probably the most important because, like 70, 80% of the nerves are actually pointing back up to the br and they're sending signals to brain regions that release gaba, for example, or glutamate. It could be inhibitory, like shushing things down, or it could be excitatory, depending on the region of the brain. So the organs are communicating back to the brain on the state of the periphery. And we know that that's happening through five HT receptors, which are serotonin receptors, which you probably heard, like, serotonin, the happiness molecule.
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Oh, yeah.
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This is one of those things, like when it gets repeated on the Internet, it really pisses me off.
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Yeah, Please correct this, please.
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Like, they're like, oh, 95% of your serotonin is produced in your gut. And so they're. They're then implying that that serotonin is. Is like making its way into your brain and then making you happy. Serotonin can't cross the blood brain barrier. That serotonin is not there to get to your brain. That serotonin is there to stimulate the 5 HT receptors on the vagus nerve. All those little ending, like nerve endings in the intestines that are sending impulses back to the brain, communicating back to the brain and keeping things kind of balanced there, including, like, haste, they chilled out. And this is coming from gut bacteria, but it's also coming from enteroendocrine cells. Because if there's any one theme in the body is that there is redundancies in the system which are probably there because they keep us from having a complete breakdown if we lose one of them.
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What role does the vagus nerve play in keeping them balanced? Because I know you can be overactive or underactive for one and the other, and if you are overactive in one or the other, what kind of problems will that cause?
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So if you have. If you're too much on sympathetic overdrive, then you're going to be anxious. If you have low vagal tone, you're going to have more inflammation. So you tend there's going to be mental health issues. There could be anxiety, depression, but also tied to weight gain. Really? Yeah.
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Okay.
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Low vagal tone. So we're digging into the depth there inflammation. Yeah, yeah. Because you're getting leaky gut also. And how many people are out there who are stressed, who don't get enough sleep or are rushing, rushing, rushing, always never taking a moment to breathe and just to do some breath work, like, that's one of the big things I teach my patients because one of the ways to activate the vagus nerve. There's so many different biohacking ways, but one. One way without having to do a cold plunge or like put your. Dunk your face in. In a, you know, a bowl full of ice.
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Right.
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Is right with you at all moments at any moment of the day is breathing. Because through those stretch receptors in the lungs, especially when you take those really deep breaths, it activates the vagus, which is the parasympathetic, which is the ventral vagus, which is what I'm talking about. That then balances out that heart rate variability. So if you're stressed because your flight just got delayed and you're at the airport and you're running late, then instead of letting that wire you up, just take some deep breaths. Yeah. Take some really deep breaths. But so many people don't know the power that they have within their body. I was lucky enough to discover this when I was 21 years old because I had gotten into medical school. Right? That was my dream. I had been a straight A student in high school, gone to Cornell undergrad. Like, you know, I was one of those competitive, like, really wanted to become a doctor. And then I had to face the reality. I'm freaking scared of needles. So. Shit. How am I going to become a doctor if I can't be in a room with needles? Alcohol also, like, rubbing alcohol makes me queasy. And needles, like, I couldn't get my blood drawn. I couldn't get a shot without passing out. Wow. So I'm. It's like right before I get into medical school, and I'm like telling my parents, I don't know if I want to do this, and they're like, oh, no, no, no. I'm a child of the immigrant Cubans.
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Okay?
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You become a doctor, lawyer, or cpa. That was.
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You better just toughen up.
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Yeah. They're like, you're gonna do it. But the other good thing is that taking drugs for mental health issues is not in our philosophy.
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I love it.
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It was. I was not raised that way, so I started looking into, well, what is happening to me when I'm at the doctor's office and I start feeling my heart rates going up. I start breaking out into a cold sweat. And then that moment of panic when suddenly it literally would look like a black curtain was coming over my eyes. And then the next thing I knew, I was looking up and everybody's, like, reviving me.
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B
Yeah.
- [34:22]
A
And I learned about the parasympathetic and sympathetic autonomic nervous system. Like, and this is, like, again, me contrarian thinking, okay, it's automatic. How do I get it under my control so it won't do this to me? That's when I discovered breath work, meditation, yoga. 21 years old, 1995, no Internet. So I'm learning this from CD Roms and from Bucks and practicing breath work. And in eight months, I completely restructured how my brain would react to needles. And by the time I got into medical school, I was able to be in a room with needles, get a shot, be okay with it. And having that journey, that journey myself, before I got indoctrinated by medical school, there was no way that you could, like, unlearn the fact that I had shown myself that there is a power within the body that they don't want us to know.
- [35:27]
B
Yeah.
- [35:27]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [35:28]
B
So are you. Are you insinuating that that's not a chemical imbalance with the need for Xanax? Is that what you're trying to tell me? How dare you? Thank you for the explanation.
- [35:38]
A
Brilliant.
- [35:39]
B
And where I was trying to go with that was to say, look, stress, anxiety, lack of sleep, there's a huge correlation with the vagus nerve with our parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems. And it's not this. Take medications and fix it. It is. Let's take a look at ourselves and look at different ways we can do this by ourselves and not rely on that. Because then we turn into zombies and that reliance becomes another reliance. Before you know it, you're on 10 different medications.
- [36:08]
A
Yeah. Because you're. You're taking one thing to undo the side effects from the other and then the side effects of the other. But anybody who's been through, like, major upset, heartache, divorce, breakup, you know, you get that pit in your stomach.
- [36:23]
B
Yeah.
- [36:23]
A
Yeah. You lose your appetite.
- [36:25]
B
Yep.
- [36:26]
A
That is a physical manifestation of your vagus nerve shutting off. So for anybody who's listening, like, if you wonder, like, how do I know if my vagus nerve is not functioning? If you have a pit in your stomach? If you eat and food just sits There and it feels like it's not moving down and you're a highly stressed person who doesn't get enough sleep. It's probably your vagus nerve and that's, that's it.
- [36:50]
B
And, and I think that for me the reason, like I, I told you, I've told several people I'm enrolled to go back to school to study neuroscience in January because I realize if I'm going to have this platform and I am going to be a, like a beacon of hope for people to actually achieve real health, I need to know all of this. And I find that this to me after really revisiting it, it's the neuro side and then the cellular side that I want to be an expert in.
- [37:17]
A
So that I can contain it and like the, the like crazy rates that Alzheimer's dementia is multiplying in this country worldwide. And it breaks my heart because people's parents are affected and by the time you have dementia, what needs to be done to start to reverse it is nothing short of heroic measures. And that means that if your parent lives in another state, you don't have someone there to supervise them. It's going to be very tough because they're going to forget what you tell them. I've seen my patients struggle with this. So the time to start is way back. Like if you're having word finding difficulties, if you're starting having to starting to have some memory issues, then you gotta look at your gut health and you have to look at your mitochondrial health.
- [38:11]
B
Yep, I agree. Well then let me ask you this because I do want to get to the coffee side, but I, I'm too, I'm too now dug in on this. You're talking about mitochondria health.
- [38:23]
A
And so for you, coffee relates to mitochondria.
- [38:26]
B
By the way, tie that in there.
- [38:28]
A
There is a, there is a tie.
- [38:29]
B
In with co. No wonder my mitochondria is so strong. Then let me ask you this. Some of your key methods for addressing mitochondrial health. And I want to ask you this too. One of the things that I can't stand is when people act like as you get older you just, this is just part of it. Yes, certain levels decline. I think that's natural. We know that. But you don't have to accept it. And I want you to talk about that, expound upon what are your key components to enhancing mitochondrial health. And as you age you can certainly build very strong mitochondria. I know that, I know you know that. But I want you to explain how.
- [39:08]
A
Structure first so you've got to dive down into the biochemistry of what mitochondria are, but what their membrane is, because the membrane is actually serving as a little mini battery. It's a, it's an electron gradient. But that can't work properly if those membrane lipids are messed up because you've been eating too many omega 6 fats, because you've been exposed to mycotoxins, because you've been exposed to pesticides, heavy metals, or even just like stress, the stress of, of aging and also leaky gut from having a disordered gut microbiome and all that. Because we know that the one thing that distinguishes centenarians in their gut microbiome is that they have more anti inflammatory bugs. Okay. So they actually are able to keep inflammation down in their gut. So back to the mitochondria. You, you have to start in the basics. The basic is the, the cellular structure, the membrane structure. Because if the membrane lipids are messed up, then the last step in that electron transport chain, Complex 4, which sits in that membrane. Cytochrome C oxidase. Yep.
- [40:30]
B
Yep.
- [40:32]
A
It can't sit properly. Yeah. And then the cell starts leaking electrons and you get more reactive oxygen species, you start affecting cellular voltage and then everything starts getting messed up because now the cell is under oxidative stress. And even though a little bit of hormetic oxidative stress is good for the cell, like hydroxyl radicals that stimulate NRF2 activation. So anti inflammatory genes, too much is gonna turn off that NF kappa B pathway and it's going to augment inflammation in the cell. So if that complex can't sit properly in that membrane because those membrane lipids have been replaced by stiff omega 6 fats, then it's going to malfunction. And that complex 4 is the spark plug in the mitochondrial battery.
- [41:26]
B
I learned this a little while ago, but a lot of people don't really talk about it, and you mentioned it multiple times now. Is the cellular membrane just. Can you explain just how important the cellular membrane is? And you were talking about like the lipid profile around it that would correlate then to having good healthy fats in your diet to keep that strong. Correct. And so super important.
- [41:50]
A
And I think a really good example is what happens, what I'm seeing happens when I, I start to replenish those membrane lipids with like phospholipids. And probably the best example is patients who are highly toxic. Yeah. So I have a patient who came in with gut health issues that we had to work on. Migraines, and then also had carpet that was 20 some years old in her home, discovered mold in one of the walls, and also lives in an area where there's pesticides sprayed. So when we did her tox panel, it lit up everywhere. And I learned something really important with her because as I put her on the phospholipids, she became too toxic, started got more migraines. But what that shows is that even just little bits of starting to repair that membrane, when you turn on those mitochondria that have been shut off, suddenly your cells start expelling all these toxins. And you have to do it in the right way or you overwhelm the person. And I've learned this now from working for a while with phospholipids that it really brings out how sensitive people are because a little bit can go a long way. But then, like, I have a patient who was mold toxic, now no longer living in the moldy environment, and within four weeks of starting phospholipids was getting her memory back that she hasn't had in 10 years.
- [43:39]
B
What are phospholipids for people?
- [43:41]
A
They're basically the. The lipids that build the membrane. So every membrane has two layers, and phospholipids have a negative and a positive charge. They kind of orient to each other, and they create this nice bilayer membrane that's inside the mitochondria but also on the outside of the cells. And what we want is a very fluid membrane, right? The more fluid, the better the communication, the better the DNA expression within the cell. The cell is able to control its redox reactions, meaning that it can then control the milli voltage inside the cell and become healthier. So it is the key, like, even before other molecules. And we'll talk about, like, you know, things like, I know you're a big fan of urolithin A. And urolithin A does things like activates AMPK expression, which then tells the cell, like, hey, make new mitochondria. Or it's also activating PGC one Alpha, which is another. It's like the switch in the nucleus that turns on mitochondrial biogenesis so that we make new mitochondria, repair our mitochondria. And it turns out also that there are certain polyphenols in coffee, chlorogenic acids, that also turn on that AMPK signal. So same thing as urolithin A, but we're getting it from coffee, which kind of ties in, like, it's so timely that this Very week. There was an article that was just published. A scientific study had been going on for years and it showed that people who drink coffee had 60, were 16. They were 16% less likely to die of any cause and 31% less likely to die of cardiovascular disease.
- [45:37]
B
All right, that's good to hear.
- [45:38]
A
Let's, let's crank it up then.
- [45:42]
B
I love it.
- [45:42]
A
There's a few caveats, but this was a. Yeah, so this was a big study. Yeah, the U.S. nannies database with over 40,000 people. And they've been monitoring them from 1999 to 2018. Most people were monitored for a period of 10 years. And they found that drinking coffee actually improves mortality, but with a caveat. The people who drank coffee in the afternoon later in the day negated those positive effects of the coffee. So it was only the morning coffee drinkers, okay, that got the greatest benefits. And it's probably because if you're drinking coffee too late in the day, then it's affecting your sleep. It's probably affecting your REM sleep. You know, I know you talk to a lot of biohackers. So again, individuality, like if you wanna don't believe it, like have coffee at 2pm and use your aura ring or use whatever device you're using to track your sleep and see what does it do to your REM sleep, what does it do to your deep sleep.
- [46:47]
B
Not doing me any favors.
- [46:52]
A
It's not.
- [46:52]
B
That's my own fault. Yeah, no, you're right.
- [46:55]
A
And I'm guessing you're a fast metabolizer. Oh, geez. Like you could probably drink coffee at 10pm and still go to bed.
- [47:01]
B
Oh, I'll pass out. But I don't sleep well. Yeah, you know, I will pass out like this. I mean, drop of a dime.
- [47:08]
A
But it's not the best sleep.
- [47:11]
B
It.
- [47:11]
A
It's just not.
- [47:12]
B
So I have to try to scale it back. I try to stop before 2:30. I like to fast in the morning and I, of course, you know, I try to wait in the morning a little bit before I have it and everything. And I like to take it right before I go do cardio. But then I start to, like, I start inevitably what happens is, I mean, to have one go do cardio and then, you know, but the work just starts flowing. The calls come in and I get going and then it's two hours.
- [47:39]
A
So here's a question. How do you make your coffee? Do you filter it? I arrow dress it. Okay. Yeah. So. So it's. So it's like a French press Basically, yeah. It's yes.
- [47:50]
B
Better. So I argue better.
- [47:53]
A
So it's different. So when you, when you do a pour over or you, you run coffee through a filter, the chlorogenic acids get through. So remember, chloro acids activate ampk, so they're also affecting. And they also reduce mitochondrial reactive oxygen species. So they're improving cellular health, but will filter out the diterpenes in the coffee. So the Cowell and the, the cafestol, which you get when you do an aeropress or a French press, and those are actually also activating the Peaches C1 Alpha pathway, which is promoting regeneration of mitochondria repair, getting rid of old mitochondria. So similar to the same thing that urolithin A is doing, because urolithin A is affecting the AMPK pathway as well as the PGC1 Alpha pathway. But you can do it by drinking a cup of coffee, depending on how you brew it.
- [48:52]
B
Right. So am I doing it? Okay then.
- [48:54]
A
So you're doing it. Good for you.
- [48:55]
B
Okay, perfect. I, I take the time to do it because it is just delicious and I enjoy it.
- [49:01]
A
The only thing that they say, and it doesn't really have like that huge of an effect on cholesterol, but when you get the di terpenes in the coffee from doing a French press style or from doing like a mocha pot, which is the way that my Cuban parents used to make coffee.
- [49:18]
B
Yeah.
- [49:18]
A
Then you're getting the ditropines and that can raise LDL cholesterol maybe like by 10, 14 points. Okay. So if you, if you have high cholesterol and you're worried about that, then you might want to change the way you're making your coffee along with drinking organic, low toxic, like free mold free coffee.
- [49:41]
B
I started drinking coffee three, four years ago. I just never did. You know, my mom was a heavy, heavy coffee drinker and she was staying with us when my dad passed away. And that's when I kind of try to. Because she was making it every day in the stupid K cups. And we're going to go there because I want to talk about, you know, health wise and everything, because that's how I started. So for me it was like, well, it's so nice and easy.
- [50:07]
A
I'll drink these.
- [50:08]
B
And they're all, they got all these flavors, you know, you don't know anything about coffee or anything at all. I'm like, whoa, Kahlua, you know, like.
- [50:16]
A
Oh, you're not, you're also not thinking about how the coffee is getting burned no, from the concentrated hot water that's coming into the K cup.
- [50:23]
B
I just know it's easy and it's.
- [50:25]
A
Got a bunch of flakes and the microplastics. Yeah.
- [50:28]
B
And that's where I wanted, that's where I'm going. So I did that for like a year or two. Then I stopped drinking and I was like, ah, it's starting to hurt my stomach, I don't feel good obviously, which we're going to get into.
- [50:37]
A
But you know, also the microplastics that you're getting from the K cup, so they've shown this in studies, it actually disintegrates the mucus layer in the gut. Really? So imagine for anybody listening, like what is the mucus layer? Imagine like a medieval castle and the moat around the castle. The moat was designed to protect the castle, creates a barrier. So in the same way, if the wall of the castle is our gut lining, the moat is the mucus layer. And if you break down that mucus layer, then it's easy for bad things to get in, like endotoxins, lps, inflammatory substances from the gut. Because then you start breaking down. As soon as the mucus layer breaks down, then you lose that buffer zone with the bacteria inside the gut. Then the next thing that breaks down is the gut lining. So when you're drinking that coffee from a K cup or if you're going to whatever coffee shop and picking up a coffee to go in those plastic lined cups, you're messing with your gut mucus layer, which is then going to cause leaky gut, which is going to lead to inflammation and it's going to disrupt the gut gut flora, leading to even more inflammation.
- [51:53]
B
Well, what do you say to the people that then say we'll just get the one that's non plastic and you dump the grounds and at the other cup, like, what is it? I don't even know, you know what I'm talking about. It's a non.
- [52:03]
A
You mean like a steel?
- [52:05]
B
What do you say? What is that?
- [52:07]
A
I mean, you still have to think about like, well, what is, what is the hot water running through inside the machine is still plastic parts because then you're not fully, you know, escaping the exposure to microplastics among just doesn't taste that great.
- [52:22]
B
But that's a whole other story. Once I transitioned into biohacking from what I was doing then, of course the first type of coffee I saw was Dave's. It's the most popular and talked about. So that's where I learned about that. I Started to study coffee more and learn about, you know, the things that we're getting into now and talking. And I said, okay, I know what I need to do now. Switch it to coffee. I ordered. His was great. I found about the Aeropress there. Phenomenal. Great tastes, phenomenal. But then it was like, okay, I'm getting a board and I, I'm sure that there's other things out there. And so that's when I started to try different mold free coffees. And I want you to talk about mold free organic, what all of that means. Because a lot of the things you read is like, well, it says it's organic, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's okay. So I want you to talk about that. But then that's, you know, I got into that realm of let's try these. Let's see how they're different, what sets them apart, what makes my stomach feel good and, and whatnot. And then that's when I found yours. And that's why I say, I'm not saying that because you're here. I'm, I, I wanted, it is my favorite and I want to talk about it because I wanted to put you in front of people because I believe in it. I don't get anything out of it except the pleasure of drinking that shit because it's so phenomenal. And that's why I want people to see you. But I want to talk about what I just brought up the difference between mold and organic. But what, what is it that you do to yours that makes it taste. Coffee all has a little bit similar taste, but there's different roasts, there's different flavors, but there's just, I don't know how to explain it, what it is with yours. It's. I, I don't know what it is. I want you to tell me, what is it? Why is it so freaking good to me?
- [53:58]
A
Well, one, it's organic, right? So, and we, we send the coffee to get tested for mycotoxins, pesticides of all sorts. Even though it's organic, I just wanted to make sure. Tested for glyphosate and also for heavy metals, even though the coffee plant isn't one that picks up heavy metals as much as like the cocoa plant. Like, you've probably heard of all the heavy metals and different chocolate brands out there, like the lead and the cadmium.
- [54:25]
B
It's terrible.
- [54:26]
A
So, but I just wanted to be safe and check for that. But part of it is the, the choice of the beans. And then the next thing is how the beans are combined, and the next. And the final part is how the beans are roasted. So the roaster that I'm working with right now uses a very fancy German air roaster. The majority of coffee in. In the United States is drum roasted, so means that the coffee beans are coming into direct contact with a heat surface, whereas in an air roaster, the coffee beans are actually being circulated the air and they're getting roasted through convection, but they're not ever coming into contact with the really hot surface. So there's no chance of overcooking the outside of the bean, burning the bean, or generating things like advanced glycosylation end products, which are aging products that come from over cooking the bean or burning the outside of the bean. And you also get, like, off gassing. Like when you're roasting the beans, you get these polyaromatic hydrocarbons. And when you're in the air roaster, it's able to off gas it away from the beans. So then the final product is very clean.
- [55:42]
B
Yeah.
- [55:42]
A
But I. I went a step further because the facility that I work with only uses organic beans, so there's no chance for cross contamination inside the machines. But then in order to choose this roast and I don't know, maybe I have. I must have a really good palate. If. Or maybe we have the same day.
- [56:02]
B
It must be. I don't know.
- [56:04]
A
I went, I flew out there and I did a blind taste test so that I would not be biased to see which combination I like the best. And that's how we came up with this newest roast, the Happy Gut coffee, which is a combination of Ethiopian, Colombian, and Guatemalan beans.
- [56:25]
B
I'm telling you because you sent me to try the new one when it came out, because I was just stuck on your old one. And I told you immediately, I was like, dude, because I even tried them back to back because I just.
- [56:36]
A
I was so nervous, I gotta tell you. I was so nervous when you were gonna call me because I'm like, oh, man. Because you. You were so in love with our original rose. Yeah. And. And I decided to, you know, go with a different roaster, create a new operation and. And bring in, you know, because I think the. What makes this one a bit different is the Ethiopian beans because they bring a bit of a floral.
- [57:03]
B
Yes.
- [57:03]
A
And fruity overtone to the. To the earthiness of the Colombian and the Guatemalan. Good balance.
- [57:10]
B
It's not too much. It's a really good balance. And that's so, you know, you know how this is too when you have something that you do a long time and you love it, and you do it and then something new, it's like, oh, wow, that was so good. You know? And that happens. So I had to temper that. So what I did was, is I did that first initially, and then I. I told Queenie, my wife, I said, okay, let's set this. Let's make sure of this now. Let's make sure I'm not just overreacting because it's something new. Let's make one.
- [57:36]
A
I'm glad you don't call me and tell me, like, when you're about to do this. I would have to do some deep breath work and get, you know, activate my vagus nerve, make sure my mitochondria are working well.
- [57:49]
B
Well, you know what, though? If I don't. If I am not honest with a friend and tell you I don't care. You know what I mean? And so I am. I am honest to a fault when it comes to something like this, especially because you need to know. And I was just like, okay. And I did it again today. I had your old one because I kind of am saving some. You know, I had that one first, and then I had this one second, and I said, damn it. I said, I love the first one so much. And I stocked up on it. When you were going out of it, I got like five, six bags of it. But I'm telling you, this one's better. It really is. And that's. It's fascinating, too, to see how when you got something that you think you can't make any better, you make it better. And that tells me a lot about a person that's willing to do that. Well, my stuff is excellent, but I know I can make it better.
- [58:33]
A
You know what? Also, like, we started in the beginning talking about mind, body, connection, energy, the intention that we hold the. The work of Masuru Emoto and how you can imprint emotion into things. The team that roast this coffee for me is like snow whites, like seven dwarfs, like, whistle while you were really like, they are. They are the most positive, happy team there. They treat their employees well. Like they're. They're just like positivity. Every time I communicate with them, it's all, like, elevated, positive. And that's why I knew I wanted to work with them. And it was a matter of just coming up with the brew that I was going to be happy with, because I'm probably as much of a coffee snob as you are. And I also didn't drink coffee for big Parts of my life. And before I launched Happy Gut Coffee, I had stopped drinking coffee for seven years.
- [59:35]
B
Wow.
- [59:36]
A
I didn't touch coffee.
- [59:38]
B
That's weird, isn't it? Then to just go start making it?
- [59:40]
A
Well, it's part of my culture. Ah, okay. My Cuban culture is like.
- [59:45]
B
There was a reason though that you did this.
- [59:46]
A
Obviously.
- [59:47]
B
I mean, there was. I was always right.
- [59:49]
A
Combination of things like you can't take people away from coffee.
- [59:54]
B
No.
- [59:54]
A
But when you start looking at the benefits of coffee and what it does. The polyphenols in coffee activate the L cells in the intestines that produce and secrete GLP1. Hey, you can make your own DLP1 by drinking clean coffee. Yeah, absolutely.
- [60:15]
B
There's a lot of correlation with so much. I just had a. A heavy metal test and then it looked at all different aspects. So it went 0 to 7. 0. Meaning you don't need any help on this. 7. You. You pretty messed up, right? My mitochondria and my polyphenol scores were all zero. Like, no, don't need any help whatsoever. So that made me feel pretty, pretty damn good. I had some other areas that were bothersome. We just moved into a new house and I can't remember which one it was, but there was like some toxicity in one of my scores and I'm assuming that's probably what it was. But with. With this. It's called Happy Gut. Obviously you got expert. But why, why is it Happy Gut? What. What about your coffee and your products? Because I use a product of yours I get on you. You started me on it at when I met you. I've had it on auto ship ever since. And it's a. It's a gut powder that you have. So what, what is it about this that makes a Happy Gut your coffee and your brand?
- [61:13]
A
I mean, let's start with the fact that it doesn't have any of the crap that can be poisonous to your gut or your body.
- [61:19]
B
Yep.
- [61:20]
A
But then it's the. It's the way that it's made. So coffees that are high in chlorogenic acid, which, yes, is a polyphenol that has a lot of benefits like we talked about. Like it helps to activate mitochondrial biogenesis. But chlorodenic acid also stimulates the parietal cells in the stomach to secrete hydrochloric acid. So basically it gives you heartburn and it gives you that sour stomach feeling. Yep. So the way that we make the coffee with the air roaster reduces the chlorogenic acid to a level where it makes it more comfortable to drink while at the same time not losing all of the chlorogenic acid. Because we want those polyphenols in there to benefit your mitochondria to stimulate GLP one secretion for all the other bioactive amines that are in the coffee. And we do that by doing a. We sort of cheat. Cuz we don't go full dark roast with this new one. We go just a little bit below the dark roast, medium to dark so we can get those chlorogenic acids out that are causing that sour stomach, heartburn, feeling acid reflux while still keeping the benefits.
- [62:34]
B
Brother man, like literally the abundance of information. I knew you were smart. I, I obviously knew that, but I didn't. I think you even brought some things to me that kind of caught me off guard. Not, not that I didn't expect that, but so well rounded and versatile. If you knew how much I love that and how much I try to pride myself on being that. And I'm nowhere near your league of expertise on any of this but I appreciate your ability to be so versatile, well rounded and offer different aspects and, and ideas of all the aspects of health. While you are a specialist, you, you know a lot about. Of a lot. And I really, really appreciate the heck out of you sharing it coming here and I want everybody to see that. So tell everybody the best places to follow you find you.
- [63:21]
A
Where can they check Instagram @Doctor Pedre. Doctor Pedre. They can find my books on, on Amazon or anywhere where books are are sold and they can learn more about.
- [63:31]
B
The coffee@happygutcoffee.com Trust me everybody trust me. This is the goat of coffee. I say that, I say that with being one of the biggest with my.
- [63:43]
A
White, with my white beard.
- [63:44]
B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well Vincent man, dude, thank you so much for coming. It was a pleasure to say the least to have you here and to have this conversation. I'm. We're going to talk more off camera about some of this stuff because it's mind blowing. But anyway, thank you again. Happy got coffee. I can't recommend that enough but I'll beyond the coffee just check him out. Learn a lot about of a lot. So that being said, stay tuned for plenty more to come. Dylan Gemelli signing off.
- [64:22]
A
Sa.