← The Thyroid (and Hormone) Fixer Podcast: Thyropause, Menopause, Metabolism and How to Fix It
The Thyroid (and Hormone) Fixer Podcast: Thyropause, Menopause, Metabolism and How to Fix It
620. The ULTIMATE Gut Episode: Everything You Wanted to Learn About the Gut But Were Afraid to Ask
01:02:24
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- [00:01]
Josh Deck
Once we start discovering and having that root cause conversation, a lot of it comes back to the gut and it's a simple conversation. When we get sick, we have to look at two things. What do you have too much of or not enough of? That's it.
- [00:15]
Dr. Amy Myers
Welcome to the Thyroid and Hormone Fixer podcast. If you've been told everything is fine, but you're gaining weight despite doing all the right things, struggling with brain fog, mood swings, low libido, or feeling like a stranger in your own body, you're in the right place. I'm Dr. Amy the Thyroid Fixer. And I want you to know right now, I see you, I believe you, and you don't have to figure this out alone anymore. We're going to do this together. But I'm also not here to play nice with bad medicine or empty promises. This show is meant to disrupt the entire health space. We're going to challenge the status quo, connect all the dots other providers miss, and give you real, practical, science backed tools you can use. Today, you're not going to get any more recycled biohacking advice, just truth, strategy and hope. Let's get you back to feeling like the badass human you're meant to be. Do you want to burn fat while just sitting around? Do you have extra weight to lose? Do you want less inflammation? Do you want to reduce your oxidative stress? Do you want to improve your lipid panel, maybe become more insulin sensitive? And once again burn fat while you're sitting there at rest at your desk or on your couch watching Netflix? Well, now you can with the power of T2 that is in Thyroid Fixer. Now, Thyroid Fixer is not just for those with a thyroid problem. It's for anyone looking to lose body fat to improve their metabolism to have better energy. Thyroid Fixer actually works at your mitochondrial level, so it is stimulating your metabolism. It's also activating ATP, which gives you more energy, nice and steady through the day. Here's the other really cool thing that Thyroid Fixer does. It turns on a gene that prevents fat from accumulating all over your body. So that means, yeah, if you slip up and you have the Oreo cookie or the sweet potato fries, which are my two favorite, they're my downfalls. That is not going to put extra fat on your butt, your hips, your thighs and your abs. Oh, and your arms, you don't want those jiggly arms. So why don't you just improve your fat burning potential and actually turn on a gene that prevents fat from accumulating on your body with the power of Thyroid Fixer. So as a listener of the Thyroid Fixer podcast, your first time purchase, you can use the code LISTEN20L I S T N2 0 we'll put that down in the show notes and if you've already purchased it but you just want to save a little something something extra, then use the code listen 10L I s t e n 10 and grab some Thyroid fixer. Stock up today because it will help you burn extra body fat and who doesn't want that? I need to talk to every woman who's been told your labs are normal while your body is screaming at you and rebelling against you. Fatigue, brain fog, the weight that will not come off, mood swings, hair loss, feeling dismissed, frustrated and confused. I get it. And that is exactly why I wrote my new book the Thyroid Fix. The no nonsense Guide to Fix Fatigue, Fogginess and Fat that won't budge. That just says it all and it is now available for pre sale. So I need your help to spread the message. I am giving you an ask as my listener and a promise at the same time. If you pre order the thyroid fix, my promise to you is to continue delivering all kinds of free advice, information, content, education, empowerment. Because that's what I love to do. Whether it's here in the just fix your thyroid Facebook group or I'm on live. I will give you everything I possibly can if you do me one favor which will be a favor for yourself as well and pre order the Thyroid fix. Now. This book is not another list of supplements, vague advice. It's not a diet plan. It's not filled with recipes. It is a clear, honest guide. It is the Thyroid Bible. It is the last thyroid book that you will ever need because it teaches you how to read your own labs. No other book has done that. It teaches you what medication and dose you need. No other book has ever done that. It will help you to understand why you are being misdiagnosed, why you're being under treated and why you can't talk about hormones, weight loss or menopause without talking about the thyroid. I called it Thyroid Bible because like I said, this is going to be the thyroid book of the next few decades. When you pre order, you're not just supporting me, you're telling the publisher. This message matters and it needs to get out to the world and it needs to get into the hands of women who have been ignored for far too long. So will you go to thyroid fix book.com and pre order a copy of yours today? It'll be shipped to you on May 12th and you will get free entry to our all day live event where I will be there answering your questions live, teaching live, and bringing in amazing guests for you to also connect with and ask your questions too. So thyroid fixbook.com pre order yours today. Okay. Needless to say, gut and gut health is on the forefront of so much many people's minds because the gut is important. It's. It's connected to literally every single system we have in our body. And yes, of course, there is a thyroid gut connection, a mood gut connection, weight gut connection, stress and gut connection, hormone balance and gut connection. But you know, when we say the gut, I mean, that really encompasses so much from digestion to motility, to the different diseases and inflammatory conditions associated with the gut. And you know, I've said this on the show before, I am not a gut expert. I don't play one on tv. I bring in people that know this stuff so that I can pick their brains for you. So you can get the information, but you're actually getting it from an expert. So we're doing something a little bit different on the show today. I am literally taking your questions to the gut expert. So we posted this in the Just Picture Thyroid Facebook group. I have a ton of questions and we're going to ask them to my guest today, Josh Deck, that has been on the show before. His podcast is amazing. I've been a guest on that as well. We'll give you all that information at the end of the show and we'll put it in the show notes. But Josh, welcome and thank you for being my point of contact Q and A for our all things gut related discussion today.
- [07:33]
Josh Deck
Yeah, I appreciate you having me. I feel spoiled to be the guy, you know, the guy. The guy T shirt that says the guy. People will think I'm a total wanker and they wouldn't be wrong, so.
- [07:46]
Dr. Amy Myers
Well, yeah, no, you're absolutely amazing. And your knowledge around all things gut just really blows my mind. Impresses me. So that's why I wanted to bring you on so that we can get all of these questions answered. Because like I said in the beginning, it's so important. Just kind of give us a brief overview before we dive into the questions about the importance of the gut. Let me. Yeah, I said it, but I want to hear it from you as well. Like, why is the gut. And I say the gut is. It's. It's like kind of a broad term. I know, but why is that such a focus nowadays?
- [08:21]
Josh Deck
I think it's a focus just because it's finally coming out. You know, there's, there's an old stat that was done, it's done through a study that's trickled its way down that the average time it takes from a discovery to go from natural medicine, or even in western medicine, from data to actual practice is up to 17 years on average. So what we're seeing here, back in the early 2000s, they did what's called the Human Microbiome project. It was this multi billion dollar project. They mapped the entire human gut microbiome. They said, here's the Bacter criteria we have. Here's what's good, here's what's bad, here's the high, the lows, the average. And now we have all these GI maps and microbiome sampling companies and all kinds of stuff that was the early 2000s. So here we are 20 something years later and we've been seeing it for the last several years, matching that 17 year or so timeline. So it's just a matter of discovery and people finally realizing this is something worth considering. There's another piece to my health I never knew existed before. And new things are also trendy. We have social media now. Instagram was what, 2011 or something when things blew up? So people are talking about it in a sphere that reaches more people and we finally just become more aware. That's all it really is. It's never been less important and I would argue today it's even more important than ever. Not only because we're more aware and we can give it the time of day it deserves, but on top of that, we're at an epidemic. I mean a bloody epidemic. I'll tell you something, Amy. I found a study because I was doing a lecture just, just yesterday at the time of recording. And back in the 1950s, we're talking bowel diseases. So Crohn's, colitis, these inflammatory diseases with blood in the bowels, the works. They're on an incline, which means every other gut condition is on an incline. Even the little things. Bloating, gas, it's all over. In the 1950s, they, they figured there was about one in 6,667 people. So call it 6,700. One in 6,700 had Crohn's or colitis. Today that's about one in two hundred and sixteen. There is a paper that just came out in Nature that expects by 2045 it's going to be 1 in 100. That is a 6667% increase in bowel diseases in less than 100 years. And that's diagnosable. So we're seeing bloat, constipation, diarrhea, numbers are between 60 to 70% of the population as some kind of gut discomfort at least once a week. It's an epidemic. So yes, it's more important than ever before because we are facing a battle against our guts like we've never seen in history. And now we know about it, we have the information to do something about it.
- [10:54]
Dr. Amy Myers
And now we know the connection to other systems of the body. So now we know. Okay, your immune system starts in the gut. 90 was it? 90% of your serotonin, your, your happy hormone, your happy neurotransmitter is produced in the gut. T4 to T3 conversion for the thyroid happens in the gut. You become estrogen dominant if you don't poop every day. Like there's so many systems now that we're aware of that are connected and tied to our gut health that I think that's bringing people into more awareness of their gi overall health as well.
- [11:30]
Josh Deck
Yeah, absolutely. Once we start discovering and having that root cause conversation, a lot of it comes back to the gut. And it's a simple conversation. When we get sick, we have to look at two things. What do you have too much of or not enough of? That's it.
- [11:44]
Dr. Amy Myers
Oh, damn. That is simple and I love that. Okay, right.
- [11:49]
Josh Deck
Is that simple. You can umbrella and say, okay, we get sick because of toxins, microbes, deficiencies, that toxins are your environments, your mold, your microplastics, chronically high stress, your blood sugar, you name it. Alcohol, processed foods, emulsified. Those are toxic. Sure. Deficiencies, Sunlight, fresh air, vitamins, minerals, relationships, sleep, relaxation, amino acids deficient in any of those things. You get sick and then your microbes are your bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites. What do you have too much of or not enough of in those three umbrellas? And you can start to figure out why you have any symptoms of any kind at all throughout your ever in your entire life. It's not your DNA, it's not your genetics, your DNA and your genes. And the methylation. I love Gary Breca's stuff a lot of the time, but this whole methylation is blown way out of proportion, in my humble opinion, because human beings may methylate poorly, but you only need this methylation in excess. Now because we have so many toxins and deficiencies in our modern world anyways, so what do we have too much or not enough of to Support our biology because our environments are no longer compatible with our human biology. And that's the issue we're facing today.
- [12:56]
Dr. Amy Myers
Yep, yep. I agree. I agree. Well said. So we are going to dive into all of the questions that I got from my just fixture thyroid Facebook group. So just a little bit of FOMO for anyone listening. If you're like, well, I have got questions too. Well, you're not in the group. You didn't get to ask. So you got to join the Facebook group in order to be able to ask your questions when I have these amazing guests on. Hello. All right, so first question, Josh. How do you heal a leaky gut? Like, what are the exact steps everyone says you need to heal it, but how?
- [13:29]
Josh Deck
Sure. How do you put a fire out? Can you spray it with water? Yes. Do you need to turn off the gas leak? Yes, yes. So many of us are coming in, hitting our bodies with what I call plant based medication. It can be the slippery elms and the aloes and the DGL and the probiotics and all these things made to heal and seal a leaky gut. Yes, those are great tools, but if you don't fix the thing that caused the leaky gut in the first place, you're never going to get yourself better. It's always an uphill battle. I described to my clients who asked a similar question. It's like you're trying to build a house while it's on fire. It's not gonna work. If you can try to piece it together faster than it burns down, you might stay ahead of the problem, but you're not fixing it. So how do we heal a leaky gut? Figure out what you have too much of or not enough of that is creating the leaks in the first place. Is it chronic stress? Is it environmental? I'd say, I think the numbers are something like 70% of US homes have some kind of mold issue in them. It's a huge issue. 80% of bowel disease mold is a piece or the main driver. So what are your environmental triggers? What are your toxic triggers? What are your microbial imbal driving the leaks in the first place? Because if you fix those and just eat real food, your gut's going to patch itself.
- [14:41]
Dr. Amy Myers
Beautiful. I love that. Okay, so for kind of this kind of blends into the next question for healing the gut. You know, a lot of people go right to probiotics. And I laugh because, you know, years ago you had Jamie Lee Curtis on with her Activia yogurt and her belly. Everybody went out. I Was like, I'm doing good for my gut. I'm eating activia. It's like, it's not as simple as that. So on the topic of probiotics, I would love to get your opinion on this. You know, so many people just throw on probiotics unloaded. Take a probiotic. My stomach hurts. Take a probiotic. I haven't pooped in a day. Take a probiotic. What's your opinion on probiotics?
- [15:16]
Josh Deck
Before I answer that, how many questions do we have so I know how much time to spend on each one?
- [15:21]
Dr. Amy Myers
Oh, we have like 50, so we're probably not going to get through all of them. So you just, you, you just roll and, and I'll take out the. The best of the best.
- [15:30]
Josh Deck
Sure. So my thoughts on probiotics, is that the question? Yes. You're going to notice a pattern everything I say here today through these questions. But let's see if you can pick that one up. When I look at probiotics in a gut, we have to look at again, what is creating dysbiosis? Remember your gut microbiome is a self regulating ecosystem. That means it balances itself. The good guys keep the bad guys at bay. The overgrowths, we get the candida overgrowth, these are all normal microbes in our body. But they are overgrowing because they are what's called opportunistic. Right. If you get a bunch of drug dealers in a city and you remove the police, they're going to take that opportunity to overgrow, to grow the crime, to sell more drugs. Your gut bacteria are the crack dealers. Right. You have a lot of good guys in there policing the bad guys. So the self regulating system becomes dysregulated because you have too much of something or not enough of something. There's environmental toxins or stress, there's food, there's whatever that's creating these imbalances. Now let's assume we take care of those imbalances. Our gut's healthy, it's healed where we're good, we have to maintain that. Well, if you've had any doses of antibiotics in your lifetime, there is plenty of, we'll say ample evidence showing that even a single dose of antibiotics can prevent certain bacteria from ever coming back. You might eliminate them entirely. So that may be a very vital part of your ecosystem you've completely removed. So we have to consider that as well. So where are the cracks in your foundation that may be exploited by your toxins, microbes, deficiencies in your environment or other things? So do we, do I even use probiotics for myself? Sure. I test them out. People send me them so I can understand the content and the research. I give them to clients. But I don't think probiotics are really what they're cracked up to be. People take them like it's a be all, end all fix for their gut, when really your food and your environments determine that gut microbiome anyways. So if you can fix those, it'll fix itself. And then I'll give them therapeutically for short term to accomplish something in a dysfunctional body. But that's it.
- [17:27]
Dr. Amy Myers
Well, and I would add too that when you look at these different probiotics on the market, you know, you might have one that's what, like 100 billion or, you know, 5 billion. And it's like, that seems like a lot, but correct me if I'm wrong, we have trillions of gut microbiota. So I picture it as like you have this huge colony which are only feeding a quarter of the people in the colony. So it's like, well then 75% of the rest of the colony is going to starve and die because you're not feeding them. You're shuttling all of the food to just a quarter of these people. And it's the same thing with our gut microbiome. If we're only feeding a few billion, which is a lot, but that's, that's still billions and trillions that are going unloved and unfed.
- [18:18]
Josh Deck
Are you bang on? It's like, it's like adding a grain of sand on a beach, right?
- [18:22]
Dr. Amy Myers
Yeah.
- [18:22]
Josh Deck
Is it going to make that much of a difference? Probably not. You think about it. Yeah. Some microbes like biogaia gastros, that's one that Dr. William Davis has used for sibo yogurt. That works. And their, their chewable tablets are only 200 million because in their studies they show that's the effective dose to do what it needs to do. So volume isn't everything, but we do think about it that way. Some of them, volume is everything. Your lactose and bifidos, they need to be in abundance. So you're taking 50 billion. Whoop D. Just let's put this in perspective because we throw these numbers around like they mean nothing. Do you know how long a million seconds is in terms of like days or weeks or months or years?
- [18:57]
Dr. Amy Myers
No, how many, what is it?
- [18:59]
Josh Deck
A million seconds is 11 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. Just for contrast now, a trillion is 32,000 years. So when you say, yeah, look at the contrast, right? You go, I took a billion probiotics. Okay, so what, you took a couple of years worth. It means nothing in the scheme of your entire gut bacteria, we have 40 to 100 trillion of these things. It's immense. What's that, 320,000 or 3.2 million years or something worth if we calculate it back to seconds. So your couple of million here and there can be therapeutic, but it's other factors, lifestyle and environments that make the long term sustainable changes.
- [19:44]
Dr. Amy Myers
I love that. That's a fantastic analogy. Fantastic.
- [19:48]
Josh Deck
Oh, glad it resonated. I just wake them up as I go.
- [19:51]
Dr. Amy Myers
So I kind of blew my mind. I know. I was like, oh, okay, now I, now I have a whole different perspective on this. Okay, so moving on to carnivore and keto dieting. How much does a carnivore or keto diet influence your gut flora compared to a more balanced diet? Do you really lose that much healthy bacteria? And if it gets skewed, how detrimental is this long term to your immune system health? If that type of diet is addressing some autoimmune issue or blood sugar, insulin resistance issue, are the trade offs worth it and are there even trade offs?
- [20:25]
Josh Deck
That's a really insightful question. Or combination of questions. Here's what I'll tell you. Diets are therapeutic. So in my experience. Let's talk about bowel disease. I use bowel disease, Crohn's, colitis, diverticulitis, because they're kind of the worst of the worst. Next to bowel cancers or having your bowel cut out, this is as bad as it gets. I've seen people on vegan diets do extremely well. I've seen people on carnivore do extremely well. We're looking at healing in repairing the gut. We have to. Again, I'm going to simplify it down to its simplest parts. What can you do to not make it worse? If you have a bunch of overgrowth in your gut and gut microbiome, and you're consuming a bunch of high fiber fermentable foods and carbohydrates, it's going to get worse because you are feeding overgrowths. Carnivore, for example, we get this idea like, oh, I went to carnivore. It made my gut feel better. Therefore carnivore is the best. I should only eat carnivore forever and always. Everyone should do is scream it from the rooftops and cool. It's a therapeutic diet. Now there's a question which diet's better for me? Well, in that instance, because your gut microbiome is always changing, Carnivore was better for you at that time. But let's look at a study. Benazotti did this one, he made it very public, he's got videos of it, teamed up with Dr. Pompa, they went through and did all of his microbiome sampling, like thousands of dollars worth of labs. And they come back and said, yep, you've lost these microbes and these ones and you lack diversity here. You need plants and fibers and all these things. And made all these recommendations. He did the opposite. He went carnivore for 90 days, three straight months, meat, salt in water, that's the lion diet. He went back and tested his microbiome diversity, A, strengthened and B, he had four new keystone species he never had before. Does this mean carnivore is good for everybody? Always? No. But here's the suggestion. We now sort of worked out and talked to Pompa about this not long ago. It is hormesis, just like you. You exercise, you work out, you go to the gym, you do bicep curls, you put it under load, your bicep grows and strengthens. Well, look at seasonal diets. Our environments are so manufactured and man made. If we went back to like the Inuit in Canada, living up north and none of it in the snow, most of them are going to eat seal blubber, 70% fat in their diet. They're going to eat some meat. That's largely it. They're carnivores, they thrive. You get other people who live on the farm, they grow their own food, they eat animal in the winter, they eat plants and vegetables and berries in the summer. That is seasonal, cyclical eating. They also have very diverse healthy microbiomes. So one, we're incredibly adaptive to anything we do. The human body is remarkable, remarkable in its innate intelligence. It adapts and it overcomes. But there's also something to be said by eating with the seasons. Is that optimal? Sure. But again, are you optimal in that season to be eating that thing? No, because you live in a modern world that jacked up your microbiome. So now your gut doesn't want to eat meat in the wintertime, it wants to eat something else because it needs to heal. Because you're an indoor environment, you're not living outside anymore. So there's a lot of different factors to that question. Keto and carnivore can strengthen or weaken depending on your situation. My advice is this, eat whole foods, foods that you tolerate that do not bother you. And then generally speaking, try low histamine because a lot of gut issues are connected to histamine issues and you might be fine. That's therapeutic diet number one. I don't care what it is as long as it's whole foods foods you tolerate generally low histamine. Outside of that, try your nuances and see if that supports your gut right now. If you get your symptoms down, then you can go to fix it later.
- [23:56]
Dr. Amy Myers
Okay, I love that. And, and it's very. Yeah, no, I love it because it's, it's a very personalized approach. It's not a one size fits all because there isn't a one size fits all in health. There really isn't. As much as somebody wants to sell you, like you had mentioned, sell you their, their protocol or. No, this is it. This is the only diet you should be doing because it works for me. No, that's not the case. We're all so uniquely and biochemically different that you have to figure out what is actually going to work for you. So totally perfect answer.
- [24:26]
Josh Deck
And your ecosystem is unique based on your lifestyle and your friends and your family and your circumstance that maybe the answer was simpler 500 years ago, but it's not now. Which is why this one size fits all we scream from the rooftops because it worked for me. You're actually doing a disservice to everybody else around you by doing that.
- [24:42]
Dr. Amy Myers
That's so true. Yeah, 100%. Absolutely. Now, what about alternatives to PPIs? Like alternatives to long term use of proton pump inhibitors or H2 blockers like a meprazole. A lot of people are on this. A lot of people have been told to take it by their doctor. And then even something like a gastric sleeve or a bypass surgery, you know, that's very, very common for that population to have pretty constant acid reflux and to actually be told, hey, go on this ppi and basically you're going to take it for life or you're going to suffer with acid reflux.
- [25:18]
Josh Deck
Yeah, acid reflux. There's a couple of reasons why you'll get it. So there's two types of deficiencies in the body. You have structural and functional. You're structural, yes. You had a gastric sleeve, you had something removed. The physical structures are gone. You now have to compensate that the rest of your life. Some may or may not affect your create reflux. If you still have your sphincters, you're fine. And there's 50 or so sphincters in the body. There's a couple major digestive sphincters, and that's fine. The other one, that's your structural. Right. The other is functional. And I'd say 99.9% of acid reflux. In my practice, of over a thousand people, I've seen in my career so far, 600 in bowel disease, I have seen zero people who have acid reflux where they have too much acid. That's never been the case. Right. It's always low because your sphincters above and below the entry to your stomach and the exit are ph and pressure sensitive. So if you have volume of fluid good, it's going to get the signal to stay shut. If you have acidity, it's going to get the signal to stay shut. If you're high stress, if you're low on vitamins and nutrients, if you lack sodium and zinc, the things you need to make stomach acid, if you've had chronic stress, if you've had a bariatric surgery of some kind, you've messed with the tissue in there, it can be inflammatory. These things weaken the sphincters. If you have an overeating disorder, then you stretch to weaken the sphincters as well. That leads to things coming up. But the number one thing we talk about, acid reflux, I just did this on episode 253 of Reversible. I talked about acid reflux is actually add acid back in. And if you've had low acid for a long time, yeah. You might have atrophy of your stomach lining, you might have H. Pylori. You got to deal with those things. Right. That's another issue entirely. But let's say they say they don't exist. It's just an acid conversation. Add it back in, see how you feel, and go slowly. Because if you don't use it, you lose it. If you atrophy that inner lining of your stomach and you've not used it because there's been no acid, it's going to feel uncomfortable. It might burn at first. Go slow, dilute your acid down, add it back in and let calluses on your hands. Going to the gym, they will build back up before you tear. Just go slowly and it's that simple. The long term repercussions of antacids are horrendous. Osteoporosis and Alzheimer's and bowel diseases, and you name it, you're screwing up everything in your gut. It's. It's an amazing process and how your body actually balances PH from the gut to the stomach. I'll give you a quick little anatomy lesson here. Every five to 30 seconds when you eat something, your stomach opens up that sphincter in your small intestine and it pulses a little bit into there. It's called the duodenal ball. That's the top of the duodenum or the entry of your small intestine in there. There's these very special cells that detect the ph under something like 4.3 or 4.7. I forget exactly. But they say, okay, we know how much acidity is. Every couple of seconds they send a signal back and they release what's called secretin. It's a hormone to tell your pancreas how much enzyme to produce. It's specifically how much pancreatic bicarb to actually neutralize that ph. And then it drops in a little bit of bile because that's very neutral as well. And it neutralizes within seconds. Every five to 30 seconds it's retesting your ph. Well, if you have alkaline, alkaline constantly it throws out the signaling process. You don't digest and absorb, you don't break down your food properly. That entire ecosystem basically from your stomach down, which is everything gets screwed up because you took antacids. So it's rarely in acidity or a lack of acidity or sorry, too much. It's almost always a lack. So we want to add back in slowly and surely and see how things go.
- [28:46]
Dr. Amy Myers
And that's classic with Hashimoto's too. I mean Hashimoto patients are classic low hcl. So true.
- [28:53]
Josh Deck
I didn't know that. Why is that?
- [28:55]
Dr. Amy Myers
I don't know the exact correlation mechanism, but my guess is because everything is low and slow. So the literal production of stomach acid as well as the production of digestive enzymes has slowed down. So Hashimoto people, especially when they're not being treated properly. So you know, Hashimoto peeps left to the T for only standard of care that allopathic medicine likes to use. The they're not optimal. They don't have enough T3 to even keep their system online and keep it running. Okay, so then at the stomach, digestive enzymes, juices, HCL not being produced, Gastric motility slows down because of the T3 receptors on. On the gut lining. So that's my guess. Of course I don't know for sure.
- [29:44]
Josh Deck
I mean it's very sensible. I mean the thyroid then if that's everything that's part of development and you taught me this, I Mean, thyroid is used for everything in your body. Body. That totally makes sense. If it slowed down your metabolic function, it would slow down manufacturing.
- [29:57]
Dr. Amy Myers
Yep. Learn something new every. Exactly. And then along the lines of, you know, the thyroid, how it basically causes mood disorders as well. And we know you know, and it can almost stack. Right. So you have low and slow thyroid function. You're going to have more anxiety and depression. But like we said in the beginning, the gut is actually the. The source of most of the serotonin. So why do we take antidepressants? Well, it's really to get more serotonin to the receptors where it needs to light your brain up and improve your mood. So this person is asking, what are your thoughts on. I've never heard of this. Gut hypnotherapy for gut brain dysregulation, causing IBS type or bloating symptoms when anything new is introduced to the body, I. E. Supplements, red light therapy, changes in hormone replacement, medication, stress, you name it. Apparently she's getting bloated with everything. So she's thinking, all right, what about gut hypnotherapy?
- [31:02]
Josh Deck
That's a really interesting question. I'm going to. Knowing nothing else about it except the raw information, I'm actually going to change the context here. So, one hypnotherapy. It's an interesting concept if there truly is gut brain dysregulation, because your gut and your brain communicate in all kinds of different levels. They communicate neurologically. You got 500 million neurons wired from your gut going right to your brain. In fact, your brain and your gut talk to each other. Millions of signals every day through chemicals and neuron movement, all kinds. But 80% or so of those signals come from your gut to your brain, right through that vagus nerve. So they're always talking through nerves, through chemicals, through microbial satellite signaling and messengers, and you name it. So that can become dysregulated. I think we go gut brain connection. It must be the problem. It absolutely can be. Try it. Let me know. I'd rather try Vagal toning, humming, cold water, breath work. Go ahead.
- [31:55]
Dr. Amy Myers
Yeah. The vagal term. Yeah. Go deeper on that. Because ironically, I was getting adjusted the other day and my chiropractor goes, you hear your stomach growling? He's like, it's because literally, like, we're activating the vagus nerve. So talk to more about that.
- [32:10]
Josh Deck
The vagus nerve, it's, I believe, the 10th cranial nerve. There's 12 of them that were called 12 cranial nerves. They're big, thick nerves that come from your brain. You know, you got your optic nerve and facial nerve and all this stuff. And this cranial nerve comes down the left side of your neck, innervates to your heart. When it gets past your lungs, your intestines, it spreads out like a horse's tail, tail innervating everything. And that connection is your lifeline between your body, your gut, signaling your immune system to your brain. How everything connects and reacts and times things out and does motility. It's all connected. When that becomes dysfunctional, that vagus nerve, then we start to run into these issues. But vagal toning is simply a process of stimulating that nerve. So if you think about meditation, if I'm going to. Oh, you can hear the difference to me talking way up here versus me talking way down here, what I'm doing. By dropping that register, I'm vibrating my throat, my chest, and that vibration stimulates my vagus nerve.
- [33:06]
Dr. Amy Myers
If you are exhausted, gaining weight, you have brain fog. You just feel off and you're tired of doctor hopping and wasting money. Listen closely. So many women bounce from provider to provider trying supplements, protocols, and then functional approaches that never truly address the thyroid. Months turn into years and you're still stuck feeling like garbage, wasting your precious life. So this is why we offer a thyroid and hormone solution call. It's not a lab review. It's not treatment. It's clarity and strategy to determine whether you're a good fit for working with our clinic. We specialize in thyroid optimization and hormone optimization together because they go hand in hand. You can't do one without the other. You have to do them both. We prescribe in all 50 states, and if you become a patient, we take care of you from start to finish. Testing, treatment, optimization, and ongoing support. You don't have months or years to waste feeling this way. And you shouldn't have to keep throwing money at people who don't truly understand the thyroid and hormones. So if you're ready for real help, go to dramy.com that's-r a m I e.com and click book a call in the top right corner to schedule your thyroid and hormone solution. Call and just let us help you get your life back and be that badass human that you are meant to be, that you deserve to be.
- [34:38]
Josh Deck
It's kind of like a massage for sore muscle. If I'm using a washcloth with cold water and putting it on my neck, it can cause contraction or stimulation to that nerve, which again is like a massage or stimulation which can stimulate Digestion, wake up the nerve, move things around and I look at it. Have you ever had dry? Getting my words mixed up. Have you ever, ever had dry needling done for physiotherapy? And have you ever had ims, intramuscular stimulation where they, they send a charge or a current through those, those needles when they're in your muscles?
- [35:10]
Dr. Amy Myers
No. That's interesting.
- [35:12]
Josh Deck
It feels great. Sort of. First it kind of stinks. It tingles or stings or burns. And then you start to get this little weak contraction and it's sort of feel the muscle vibrating till eventually it goes thud, thud. And you feel the muscle contracting. What they're doing, it's kind of like an oil change for the nerve where each nerve, they communicate and the head's connect and they send signals. But back and forth between the heads of each nerve, right? These neurotransmitters literally pick up the signal. Like it's kind of like a messenger bird. Here's the note. Give it to one bird, they take it next and the next and the next game of telephone. When you're doing IMs, what they're doing is stimulating the nerve in those neurotransmitters that get junked up between them to get junky signals which leave you kind of half contracted or sore. It cleans that up like an oil change. I picture doing vagal toning. Sim like very similar process for the nerve, which. Or humming or breathing or cold or stimulation or whatever it is you're doing is sort of performing an oil change to clean up those signals, which is really great for that nerve. It keeps it healthy and keeps it clean. It's like a quote, detox, if you will. But to further this question, can hypnotherapy help with vasovagal toning? Sure. Can it help with gut brain connection? Totally. But with all the symptoms you describe, you're somebody who's hyperreactive to anything you do. What was the list of things? There was red light. What other things were they reactive to on that list?
- [36:31]
Dr. Amy Myers
I mean, she just basically said everything. So even hormone replacement therapy, medication, supplements, red light. I mean, just anything she does.
- [36:39]
Josh Deck
In somebody who's that sensitive, I look at two things. First, one, mitochondria. If your body can't process, can't move, if you're in a cell, danger, response, whatever it is, mitochondria are locked. They're going to prevent you from reacting, or they're going to cause a reaction and prevent you from acting toward anything. Number two is your liver. Red light. Therapy, supplements, hormone therapy, all this stuff either stimulates, moves through, cleans or has to process through your liver. If that is congested, environmental toxins or mold or whatever it is, you're going to be hyperreactive. If you're the person who takes a quarter of a Tylenol and that does you like what six does for somebody else, you have a sip of alcohol and you're drunk, your liver is congested and that's why you're reacting. It's not the hypnosis you need need, it's actually cleaning a junk up system somewhere else.
- [37:27]
Dr. Amy Myers
That's great. Okay. I love it, I love it. So kind of going back to the stomach acid conversation. What is the best way to replace stomach acid after going through a very stressful period of time and being in perimenopause? Also, should I avoid drinking water during meals? So break each one of those down because I think actually the drinking the water during meals probably reduces your stomach acid and digestive enzymes. But I'll let you take.
- [37:55]
Josh Deck
Yeah, no, it's brilliant. You're bang on with that, right? You're diluting. If you're not making enough, you only have so little, you add water, you are diluting your ability to digest. Sure. Now in those cases, I would suggest limiting water 30 minutes before and after meals and sip during if you need to, that's fine. But if you want to add stomach acid back in, you can replace, you can get betaine HCl, that's B E T A I N E. Bain HCl is hydrochloric acid. Little pills over the counter, they're not expensive. Bottle of 240 is like 20 bucks. And so you can get these and start with just one. This is what I recommend for sort of a tolerance protocol with your first protein meal. Maybe it's breakfast. You're having couple of eggs and some sausages. Cool. Try one pill. Do you have burning, do you have reflux, do you have bloating gas? Or even later, acidic bowel movements back it off. That's maybe too much for you, right? Maybe it's not an acid issue. It could be something else. But if you feel nothing, great. Now at lunchtime you're having some chicken salad, have two pills, dinner time, you're having a steak, have three pills, breakfast the next morning, have four and five and six and keep increasing until you get bloating, acid reflux, burning sensation, anything. And then back it off by a couple. And that's sort of your tolerance level. That's how you can directly add acid Back in now, if that's what you need. Second to that, if you've already added the acid back in and you're feeling good, leave it be, but you want to back off of it and start to manufacture your own. If it's been a period of stress you've gone under that led to a decreased production, manage the stress, get your cortisol back under control, get your probiotics in if they're going to be beneficial in this situation. Get your gut back to regulating. And I'd recommend 25 to 50 milligrams of zinc picolinate or zinc carnosine. Carnosine is more expensive. Picolinate is pretty cheap and it'll do the job. And salt your food, add the sodium. Zinc and sodium are the two most important things you need to make your own stomach acid, both of which get depleted under high stress. So if you're in the red, not getting enough from your food because you don't have the stomach acid to break it down and absorb those nutrients, supplement them, control the stress and add back in, and eventually you should start regulating if that's all there is to the picture.
- [39:59]
Dr. Amy Myers
I did not know that about salt and stomach acid. And so, you know, of course my mind starts rolling and I go, okay, what about all those people who have high blood pressure that are being told to do a low sodium diet? Do they then have low stomach acid production, which then produces the acid reflux to. Then they get another band aid medication called the PPI to go on top of the acid reflux. They're already on, you know, blood pressure medication for their bp and they were told to limit their salt. And like, you can just see the. The allopathic conventional model of band aid. Band aid. Band aid. Instead of just, how about you, like Josh said, just like, add some salt and, you know, maybe a supplement. And you just avoided three pharmaceutical drugs and the cascade.
- [40:50]
Josh Deck
Because then 10 years down the road, you need more for whatever disease they created and then the symptoms they cause, you have another one to mask those symptoms. But you're bang on. This is. This is why I like you, Amy, because you think critically and go, well, what if. What's the cascade? Where does this start? What does this mean? What else could be causing this? You're bang on. Sure. You're on low sodium. Absolutely. Can that contribute to issues? Yes. Salt is one of the most important things. We need real salt, of course. Not iodized table salt crap. But if you're having blood pressure issues, there's something. This is back to College. But there's something called the renin angiotensin aldosterone system, and this is a balance between your liver, your lungs, and your kidneys. They balance out the hormones to say, how much sodium do we have, how much to excrete, et cetera. Sodium and blood pressure has not been correlated. They've said, oh, yeah, we think it's responsible. The studies0 have actually proven it. It's all a wash. So dropping your salt doesn't do anything except deprive your body of a necessary nutrient. Fix your liver, clean up your diet, exercise, do some basics. If you have inflammation in your blood vessels from toxins from your gut, for example, here's a fun connection. Your gut bacteria, when overgrown, you get these bacterial fragments and toxins. We call these LPS or lipopolysaccharide. Your gut gets inflamed, they leak into your blood. Well, these toxins circulate around your blood. Let's say they land in your heart right now, your body goes, oh, there's inflammatory LPS here. I'm going to produce excess cholesterol, because cholesterol can bind to these toxins to neutralize it like a fire extinguisher on a flame. So now we've neutralized. Well, I'm in flame. Number one, chronic inflammation of the blood vessels. What does it do? It hardens them. Number two, you have all this cholesterol piling up, which eventually, over time, will harden into plaque if you don't stop or slow it down. Now you have hardening, and now you have plaque, and now your doctor goes, oh, it's atherosclerosis. And now you got to take this drug and that drug got to put a stent in and give you blood pressure pills. No, no, no. Stop the inflammation from the beginning. If you can do that, you'll be fine. And that's why your blood pressure drives up. When your heart goes lub, dub, squeeze, contract. What it's doing is it pushes and it creates pressure on the blood vessels. That's when you get your systolic, that top number at 120, or whatever it's going to be when your heart relaxes and it goes dub. Now that blood pressure comes down, right? If you picture a balloon filled with water and you squeeze one end of it, you fill up the top side. That's the increase of pressure. You relax your hands and the pressure decreases. It evens out through throughout the container because you've only got 4 to 6 liters of blood per human being as an adult in such A limited amount of blood vessel space. Millions of miles, sure. But it's limited capacity. So that's why your blood pressure increases when you squeeze. The vessels are hardened due to inflammation. Therefore you're putting extra pressure on walls that will not move. That's where blood pressure comes from. It's inflammation.
- [43:38]
Dr. Amy Myers
Yeah. Not salt, people.
- [43:40]
Josh Deck
Not salt.
- [43:41]
Dr. Amy Myers
Oh, I love that.
- [43:42]
Josh Deck
Right? Let me just break it down and think about it logically. Suddenly, medicine makes no sense.
- [43:47]
Dr. Amy Myers
Well, now, and I think sometimes they just guess to feel good. Like, look at what happened back was the 70s, American Heart association comes out. I was like, yeah, so you want to stop eating red meat and egg yolks because that's the cause of cholesterol. It's like years later, we're like, no, it's not. Thanks for that bad advice you just had. Americans basically switch their consumption from real protein to carbohydrates because you just scared them away from eating real food. And real.
- [44:18]
Josh Deck
Yeah, well, it's all lobbied anyway. I mean, all the government regulations, like, they don't care about you. It's all about who pays them to say what. And then we trickle it down like it's gospel and scream and yell at each other when we disagree. It's all.
- [44:29]
Dr. Amy Myers
It's all. That's why I say be careful with AI and your health because we don't know what's feeding the AI systems. You know, Big Pharma, I'm sure, has already paid chat GBT to fill it with, like, all you need is GLP1s so that there's that. Oh, well then that's going to be my next springboard question. What is your opinion and what have you seen with this huge, like explosion of GLP1s? I mean, everybody is using them in some form or another.
- [45:03]
Josh Deck
This one I'm going to leave more in your court because the GLP1s aren't something I would claim at all to have any knowledge enough on to speak about. But what I can say is this. I have seen a lot of evidence showing motility disorders, gastroparesis, which is basically a paralyzation of your stomach to contracts. You're not going to digest motility issues, which leads to reabsorption of toxins over fermentation of food and bacterial dysbiosis, and all the issues come from that. So GLP1s, like anything, we need to be careful. Some people will react worse than others. And pharma, that is their golden goose for a century. They said, if we can find something to make people not fat, it's going to be our golden goose. Look at hydroxy cut. Back in the early 2000s, right, I walked around 145 pounds. I was a high end athlete. I was 10% body fat naturally. And I took hydroxy cut for what? Because somebody told me it'd be good, right? Guilty, guilty. It's a golden goose because we're vain and we're all assholes, quite frankly. But there are benefits to those with blood sugar issues. That's the original intent. But then they went, oh, it looks like it also creates weight loss. Bingo. And now everybody gets it. But the issues should not be ignored. And it was all, it can't happen to me. We all do that until it does. So I'm careful with them, but I won't speak to them as far as how they work, what they do, the efficacy, et cetera. Except that I would rather my body produce its own GLP1, which it does. It's just a peptide. Even Akkermansia microbes can produce this GLP1. There's a lot of benefits from it in normal amounts. If I need it in excess, it better be a therapeutic dose where I can say, here's one. What I'm doing and going after, what I'm going to be taking, how long I'm taking it for, and the results I want from it. If you can't name those things, you are arbitrarily on a medication not knowing what you're doing or the end goal is, and you will have a problem. I don't care if it's ibuprofen or GLP1. There's an issue somewhere along that road. We just don't know where until it happens. So I proceed with extreme caution.
- [47:06]
Dr. Amy Myers
Yep. No, I'm with you there. I see the pros, I see the cons. I'm kind of, I'm, I'm split down the middle, but I waver on a daily basis when I see, you know, more and more issues. I didn't know if you were actually seeing more gut issues in your, your client population from people taking GLP1s and then slowing the gastric motility and getting the backup of toxins and all the
- [47:29]
Josh Deck
things I've not seen much personally in my practice yet. I think maybe I will in the future. But what I'm seeing right now, people have already been dealing with bowel, like severe bowel issues, issues, Crohn's colitis, diverticulitis, even severe IBS. They might be on GLP1s. I've had several People say, what do you think about this? Should I try them? I go, no, no. You're overweight because of all these other things. We fix these, you won't need the GLPs, and you already have gut issues. If you take them, you're adding another factor. You could really screw things up. Don't do it. I've had some people do it as they were leaving the program because I wasn't there to tell them no anymore, and that's fine, but I don't know how they ended up.
- [48:05]
Dr. Amy Myers
Yeah, yeah, okay, fair enough. Fair enough. Okay. The big. Oh, my gosh, this is just such a. A big, big, big topic. And one. Honestly, I still. I don't have an answer to. Parasites. Do we all have them? Is it true that if you have a pulse, you have a parasite?
- [48:24]
Josh Deck
Yeah.
- [48:25]
Dr. Amy Myers
Okay.
- [48:25]
Josh Deck
Now, I'm not a parasitologist, but I deal with a lot of parasites. People argue it wasn't a parasite. I'm like, you know what? I prepped somebody and gave them a parasite protocol, and these big, long, often irregular things started coming out of them. They responded to the protocol, and they feel better because of it. Call it a parasite or not, I don't care. But I have seen parasites a lot. And yes, if you have a pulse, you have them. It's like, if you have a pulse, you have Candida. They're not bad. In fact, there are many instances where studies have given people whip worms like Trichura suis, and they've seen moderate but not great enough results to say, okay, everyone's compared to the placebo, but there are parasites that do well in your system. Our body is comprised of parasites, bacteria, viruses, and fungus, all working in harmony together. Just because you have, oh, I got parasites. They're not bad. It's bad parasites that are bad. It's overgrown parasites. That's a bad. It's Candida As a fungus. Overgrown is bad. And its natural form produces over a dozen beneficial byproducts for your body to be healthy. So I think we demonize parasites. But I will say this. 80% or so of my Crohn's colitis clients that I see have mold as a primary driver, which leads to an environment where invasive parasites get in or can overgrow. Then what was a normal issue now is problematic, much like Candida. So your environment can breed excess and overgrowth? Absolutely. But are they always a problem for everybody? New? No. In fact, a lot of people who try to do parasite protocols end up making themselves worse and then come to see me after and go, oh no, I got bowel disease. Yeah, because you jacked up your system because you didn't prep it properly for the parasite protocol. Right. What's her name, the, was it worm queen or something? She's got that Rogers hood. Great products. I like them. I love cellcore products. I use them all the time for my clients. It's just that we have to be careful in the circumstance, in the case scenario in which to use them because you can make yourself much worse. Because it's not all these things just kill parasites. No, no, they're antimicrobial, they're antifungal, they're anti biofilm, they're anti parasite. You could be releasing shit storms. You don't even know what you're doing until it's too late. So yes, we all have parasites. No, they're not always a problem. And in many cases it's always wise to at least do it once or twice a year, once you're healthy enough to do it. Most countries around the world, except for us, do that a couple of times a year. They do parasite protocols.
- [50:45]
Dr. Amy Myers
True. That is true. Okay, well, thank you because, yeah, I, I still wasn't quite sure where I landed with that because again, when you look at testing, which is my next question, when you look at testing, it's not definitive. I mean you could have parasites and they're not always going to show up on a GI mat test. So it's kind of hard to know like you go off of the fact that, okay, I have a pulse, so therefore I parasites. Or, or do you, do you actually test? So this brings me to the next question of gut testing. Not just parasites, but if we want to get a really nice picture of what is going on inside of our gut. What do you prefer for gut testing?
- [51:27]
Josh Deck
Yeah, I, I'm a big fan of the Gut Zoomer from Vibrant Wellness. I think it's one of the best ones out there. It's one of the most comprehensive, you know, genova and diagnostic solutions and doctor's data and all that stuff. They're okay. But I really like the Gut Zoomer because it's this big comprehensive, something like 29, 30 page spit out. They give you with all your inflammatory markers, all your byproducts, individual microbes, not just Lactobacillus spp. You'll see this marker on some microbiome samples, that's your non species specific umbrella. They measure all of them as a whole. What are you low on, what are you high on? But in a lot of cases, I do look at microbiome sampling for my clients who are in the severe bowel disease space. But I often don't bother till much later down the road. They always want to get one. But again, your gut microbiome is a self regulating ecosystem. I'm not interested in how severe it is right now. I'm interested in what caused this regulating system to dysregulate in the first place. Because now, once I go to change that environment, change the ecosystem, we support your drainage and all these different factors. Your microbiome is going to shift so much from day one to the 16th week or the 30th week, wherever you need to be, that getting the test at the beginning is actually a waste of money. If it's small tweaks you need to make or you're on the cleanup side, you've already done the work. You've changed your environments, your ecosystems. You've already addressed all the things that screwed your microbiome up in the first place. Yes. Now we'll go to test it to see what needs to be rebuilt. Right. If I'm going into a war zone, I'm not bringing engineers with me, I'm bringing in soldiers, I'm bringing in medics. All the basic stuff will rebuild later. That's what I need to assess my terrain and see what's going on. That's my take on it. But if you have one already, there are patterns you can look at, like parasites. Can you see them? You're right. Sometimes, I'd say 30% of the time or less. In fact, 25 to 30% of the time, if you have parasites, you will have active eosinophils, which you can see in a microbiome sample. Your eosinophil protein, maybe eosinophils in blood, but again, 25, 30%. If you give that stool sample and the parasites aren't in your bowel, they're not showing up in the sample. If they're not in a shedding cycle, they may not show up in that sample. They make enzymes that break themselves down, so they may not show up in the sample. So we have to look at other markers, probabilities, patterns, symptoms, and all kinds of other stuff as well. But microbiome sampling is helpful, but it's not the be all, end all. I think a lot of people spend a couple hundred bucks doing it and waste their money. Because what, one, context, two, timing. And three, what do you do with it? I pay an engineer to get a blueprint in my house. I don't know What I'm doing as a blueprint, I need to pay another expert now to help me deal with this thing. It's foreign. So that's my advice, is I would just wait till somebody tells you you need one. And if you do have a gut issue and you go and see a gut person or a health specialist or your naturopathic, oh, you got dysbiosis. Let's kill it. Hold on. Why is it overgrown? Because if you don't fix that, it will come back. And I see that all the time. Naturopaths, I love natural naturopathic medicine, but I can't tell you the amount of people who come in to see me go, oh, I'm seeing my functional doctor, my naturopath, and they had me on these antimicrobials. I'm like, why? Why now?
- [54:29]
Dr. Amy Myers
Yeah, it's frustrating. I am with you. This is why we're so aligned. This is why I send my gut people to you, is because I. I firmly believe, like, why. You know, there's a lot of these integrative and functional practitioners that the people don't even walk through their door. Jump on a zoom, and they're dropping $500 to $1,000 in. In gut testing. It's like, you haven't even met with them. You haven't even had a conversation with this person, and you're ordering a gut test right off the bat. It's like, why don't you save them some money and figure out whether or not they actually need that test?
- [55:05]
Josh Deck
Yeah, yeah, I agree. And there are some doctors I love and respect, like Dr. Tom O', Brien, brilliant doctor. I've learned so much from that guy. His brain is like an encyclopedia. But something he does is he has a full sample. He does the total toxic and the gut zoomers and all these things. Right away, to get a picture, I'm like, yeah, in a lot of context, for general health, it's probably a really good idea. There's nothing wrong with that. But for the gut health space, I would say, why now? Is it appropriate? Or is it more appropriate later?
- [55:35]
Dr. Amy Myers
Right, right, exactly. Now, on those tests, there's. There's a marker called secretory iga, and we have a couple questions regarding the gut and autoimmunity. The. The. The gut and. And where our basic immunity starts. So my understanding is that SIG A is a marker of our gut immunity. It's kind of like our first. First line of defense to invaders of our gut. Is that true? And what's the connection with Hashimoto's? Crohn's disease and other autoimmune conditions.
- [56:09]
Josh Deck
Yeah, it's a great question. So your secretary iga, it is the main immune antibody that it's, it's all mucosal surfaces primarily, like your gut lining. You can find it in your respiratory tract. You even get it like babies will get it from breast milk, even in your saliva. Right. So any mucosal surface, oral, rectal, vaginal, name it, it's there. And so secretory IGA is kind of like a first line defense. Now we say antibody, like you can get antibodies to the flu, you can get antibodies to yourself, would be an auto antibody. Right, but there's differences there. So your secretory iga, it's your first line in the gut. It'll bind to microbes like Bear, you know, again, your, your parasites, viruses, bacteria, fungi, et cetera. It can neutralize toxins and it can even prevent pathogens from attaching to your intestinal lining where they can grow and multiply themselves. So it also, in that way then balances your gut microbiome. When looking at it clinically, let's say you do a stool test and you have low secretory iga, it can indicate a lot of things. It can show chronic stress, it can show HPA or your hypothalamus pituitary axis. It can show dysfunction. It can show that your immune system, if you're a chronic disease patient with bowel disease for decades, you, your sec IGA is low. It can show your immune system is exhausted. It can show your microbiomes imbalance. It can mean that there are long term infections or mold in your environment, like these long term toxins. But if it's high, it could show active inflammation or an active infection. It can just be a byproduct because there's dysbiosis. So it's ramped up because it's working harder. It could be food antigens. So there's a lot of factors there. But think of it like a shield. Think of it like a coating and a protective barrier that can get tired, right? Like a bouncer in a bar. It can get tired and fall asleep, or it can overwork and start punching girls. It can do anything it wants based on the environment and the circumstance. So it is a marker. But it's contextual. And I think sometimes I hate to use the word dunning kruger on people who are trying to better themselves, but we all are susceptible to it. I know so little about the context, I'm overconfident about what to do. Or what this means. That's really what Dunning Kruger is. You don't know enough to understand the concept, so you're overconfident. And we see this a lot. I get clients who come to me. Well, I did this thing. I took all these things, I went to Google. I'm like, it's great, you're on the right track, but you're missing so much context to make it functional, to make it beneficial, or even not dangerous. So sec iga, great. Understand it, know it. But there's a lot of context around reading it. Like, I looked at a microbiome sample two hours before our call together today, and they said, I'm not sure what's wrong and nobody's figuring it out. I'm like, I've seen this pattern before, your microbiome. I can't see molding or microbiome, but I've seen patterns like this that tell me it could be a mold issue. Elevated secretory iga. A lot of the good guys were down. A lot of the commensals were up. There was poor bile flow. I could see the liver was congested. Those are classic textbook signs of mold infection. So there's context in pattern recognition as well, that dragging and dropping into chat GPT will present very confidently. But our AI systems aren't perfect and they will tell you what you want to hear. So we have to be very careful with that as well.
- [59:17]
Dr. Amy Myers
Yep. No, they absolutely will. Yeah, I'm not. I'm totally not sold on using AI for your health. I. I try to warn people about that, because if you notice patterns, you will notice that it will tell you what you want to hear, not necessarily what you need to hear. Okay, last question. This is a big one as well. I'm sure you get this a lot. Fiber. The fiber question. Now, let me set the stage. So you have your menopausal ladies, right? And they are being told by everybody in the menopausal space that you need fiber. And, you know, you. Yes. Let me say this. The broad message is you need to poop every day. You need to poop every day because that is a detoxifying process. Process. And if you don't. And let's say you're on bioidentical hormone replacement, you can get a backup of estrogen, and you can become estrogen dominant because of the process of the breakdown of estrogen metabolites and the excretion and all of that. So, yes, you can become estrogen dominant if you're not pooping every day. But I don't know that adding fiber, Josh, is necessarily the answer here. So can you speak to the fiber discussion?
- [60:29]
Josh Deck
Yeah. Context. If you're highly inflamed, you have overgrowth, you're giving fermentable, digestible things to bad bacteria. It's going to create bad issues. There's actually a study, and while you were just talking about this, I pulled it up. It was. When was it published? 2012. It's titled stopping or Reducing Dietary Fiber Intake Reduces Constipation and its Associated Symptoms. So these people stopped fiber and their constipation went away conventionally. Your doctor will say, oh, you're constipated. Take more fiber. What is the ecosystem or the context in which I'm putting that thing in? It's like exercise. Is it going to make you stronger? Yes. Go do some squats, go for a run. Absolutely. If you got two broken legs, it's a bad thing in the same context.
- [61:15]
Dr. Amy Myers
Right, Right.
- [61:16]
Josh Deck
Fiber is not good for everyone. Always. It's. We have to look. I think we often get stuck behind this dogma of fiber is good. I'm going to eat more. My gut will get better. Then we eat it. We feel worse. Oh, I must need more fiber. Pause. Take a step back. Reduce your variables. Take the fiber out. Do you feel better or worse? I feel better. Okay, so fiber is good for some guts. It's not good for your gut. Right. Now it comes back to the Carnivore keto conversation. I had a woman in and she's one of the testimonials I got on my website. She was 55, 050 bowel movements a day, severe ulcerative colitis. Every drug, every medication, nothing was getting better. She had just the worst of the worst symptoms. She's already a tiny lady to begin with. Within three weeks time, it was just stress management, basic stuff. She was down to about five and eight bowel movements a day after almost two decades. Within two months, she was eating bags of seeds and nuts and eating fruits and vegetables and feeling fine. Because for her, in that instance, all the doctors said, avoid fiber, it's going to make you worse. For her, it was okay, so context matters. When we're actually applying any kind of dietary advice to anybody, there's no one size fits all. There are great carnivores out there. You know, you got Anthony Chaffee and Sean Baker, and as a fellow, I follow Carnivore JT on Instagram. He talks about fiber and they're all carnivores. I'm fine. I've done Carnivore. I love the way I feel on it, but. But I also like fruits and vegetables and love the way they make me feel. Do I think one is superior? No, I think like you said, it's bio individuality in the ecosystem in which you're putting those food ingredients into.
- [62:50]
Dr. Amy Myers
Yep, exactly. And what is making you constipated? So if you're using fiber for constipation, and again, your thyroid's in the toilet, like, that's not going to make your thyroid work better. You're still going to be conservated. You're just adding in fiber, and you're probably will get more constipated. And I have to.
- [63:08]
Josh Deck
This bulk. And this bulk won't move because your thyroid is slowing motility. Right. So now you got extra bulk you can't do anything with. Now you got an impaction, and now you got to go to the hospital.
- [63:17]
Dr. Amy Myers
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Context, context, context. That's the message here. What are you putting. Wait, what was the. I want to leave with the. The beautiful quote you said in the beginning? What are you either taking too much of or not enough of? Right. Did I get that right?
- [63:35]
Josh Deck
Yeah, yeah. The two reasons you get sick. You have too much of some things or not enough of other somethings.
- [63:41]
Dr. Amy Myers
Love that. I love that. That's kind of like the mic drop moment to. To leave this conversation on, because it can apply to so many different aspects of our health, but especially our gut. So, Josh, thank you so much today for answering all of our questions about the gut. This has been like, literally the ultimate gut episode because we covered so many different aspects. Really, what's on the people's minds? And these are the questions that you and I see all the time.
- [64:09]
Josh Deck
Yeah. And I appreciate you bringing them up. I think that's a really cool concept for an episode. And it's so nice, you know, as a. As a podcast host, to be able to talk to your audience about what they want to know, not what we think they should hear. I love hearing from you guys. I know you love hearing from your audience, like, when they come to you and say, I love what you teach. Can you share about this thing? Hell, yeah, I can. That's my favorite content to make. So thank you guys for all your amazing questions. It just gave us such great context what's going on in your world, And I hope this. Hope this helped you.
- [64:41]
Dr. Amy Myers
Absolutely. So tell people where they can find you and work with you if they're listening to this going, I want more. I want more. Of Josh.
- [64:49]
Josh Deck
Absolutely. You can find everything you need in one spot. Head over to Gutsolution ca. That's all singular CA for Canada. Gutsolution ca. There's all kinds of information. You get my social media Oshdeck Health. You can get two podcasts there. I have one called Reversing Crohn's and Colitis naturally and I've got Reversible that's reverse able, which Amy, you've been on twice and we'll be releasing your episode about your book actually coming up, which is very exciting. So we'll have that out. So it's all the things you can find@gutsolution ca. And we just, we're very excited actually. Just had a full whole rebrand and the website got redone. It is beautiful. We're just so excited about it. It was expensive, but it looks expensive. That's the point. So it's all good.
- [65:33]
Dr. Amy Myers
Pretty now.
- [65:35]
Josh Deck
It's pretty now. That's right. Pretty things cost money now.
- [65:38]
Dr. Amy Myers
Pretty things cost money. Exactly.
- [65:41]
Josh Deck
I'm married. I know.
- [65:44]
Dr. Amy Myers
We have female listeners. They know. So. All right, Josh, so check it out. We'll put that all in into the show notes below. Thank you for your questions. Like Josh said, we, we do. We genuinely love hearing from you and if you weren't in the Facebook group, go over and join the just fix your thyroid Facebook group. That way you can get your questions answered by my guests and by me when we go live every single week. So we'll see you over there. Make sure you subscribe and share this episode with anyone that you know is dealing with some gut issues because we covered a ton today. Like I said, the top of the mind topics, the questions we hear all the time. This is the episode that you want to share. So until next time, thank you so much for listening. The information shared on the Thyroid Fixer podcast is intended solely for informational and educational purposes. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always consult with your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition, treatment or before making changes to your healthcare regimen, including medications, supplements or other therapies. Use of the information provided in this podcast does not establish a doctor, patient or client, provide a relationship between you and the host or between you and any other healthcare professionals featured on the show. Any medical opinions or statements made by guests are there their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host or affiliated parties. Statements regarding dietary supplements or health related products mentioned in this podcast have not been evaluated by the FDA These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Some episodes of the Thyroid Fixer podcast may include sponsorships or affiliate links. The host may receive compensation for discussing or promoting certain products or services. Any such sponsorships or affiliates affiliations will be clearly disclosed during the episode. All opinions expressed are those of the host or guests and do not necessarily reflect the views of any sponsors. The inclusion of a product or service does not imply endorsement by any healthcare professional featured on this podcast.