If you do not know about the research of the Human Genome Project over the last decade, you might find that the study of the body’s biomes (that is correct, we now know we have biomes all other the body) has revealed some things that do not align with what we have been taught, even by good providers who understand the importance of gut health. The purpose of this article is to bring an awareness of gut health and detox strategies that promote healing and prevent disease!
Here are a few things you may want to consider:
Traditional probiotics, even the top-tier expensive probiotics, are mostly dead cells and debris
100% of traditional probiotics on the market are collected from the colon and rectum of humans and animals
Once collected these organisms are freeze-dried but many of them are wounded and die
Manufacturers of probiotics are allowed to list the organism count as the estimated number of organisms collected because the end-product cannot be accurately determined (of course, they don’t literally count the number of organisms present so the truth is that it is unknown whether a $50 bottle of probiotics are giving you a value of $50 or $10 worth of organisms. Bottom line is that the label does not match what has been found in the bottles.
However, if you walk out into nature and look out over a field, you will have hundreds of billions of trillions of organisms included in the visual field you are taking in. We no longer play in the dirt and have become such a anti-bacterial species that we wash all beneficial bacteria away in an effort to prevent getting sick from bad bacteria. Guess what, when our biome is balanced and we are healthy, we do not get sick from bad bacteria. They do not thrive in a healthy body terrain that is not hospitable to them! Isn’t that cool!
In recent years, new companies have taken the research of the HGP to their labs and soon it will be common knowledge that soil based probiotics, encompassing a much broader range of organisms, are needed to truly reseed the biome but more than that, they are needed for disease prevention!
You heard that correctly! Many diseases are being related to the biome organisms that are, or are not, present.
Especially, interesting to me are the psychiatric and mental health diagnoses that are being related to the biome! It totally blew my mind to learn the research has shown specific common biome imbalance among people diagnosed with anxiety, ADD, bi-polar, and schizophrenia! Hmm, maybe it’s not totally genetic after all. Is it then possible that psychiatric drugs are not always the answer!
Biome and disease are at the forefront of a new understanding of disease prevention and healing. For instance, we now know that archaea microbes are powerful organisms who have been found to be the elite bacteria of the gut. They are small in size but they are the Generals and Captains, as one doctor put it, that instruct millions of little defense squads that reside in the gut to assist the immune system, handle waste, pathogens, toxins, and heavy metals. In other words, archaea direct actions that protect the gut from damage.
They have even found that archaea are present on human skin…yes, the skin has a biome and things like cystic acne, psoriasis, etc. can be mitigated by changing the biome of the skin, both internally and topically
Archaea are the protectors extraordinaire! In a laboratory study, Dr Jeffery West found that archaea deactivated the harmful effects of metals, pathogens, and harsh chemicals….actually it rendered every chemical they threw at it harmless! Of course, just buying a bottle that has archaea in it will not help much but there will likely be a lot of marketing around this organism, but new organisms have to be properly introduced to the gut and fed in a way that the non-beneficial organisms do not crowd them out!
As healthcare providers, we have collectively failed to really address the gut’s role in health. While I wish there was a way to heal without addressing “diet”, I do not think there is and this is where most people give up. There are very deep emotional issues around putting something in the mouth, digesting it, taking all the good things from it, and eliminating the rest. Everyday, we are faced with taking the world and its inhabitants in, digesting the myriad of ways we are affected, and working toward not losing the good things while also eliminating things that are not good. Why do ya think there is so much talk about emotional eating? People eat to survive, socialize, and cope. I recall working with diabetics who were clearly going to lose a leg, but they could not remain compliant with their diet and insulin. They were labeled “non-compliant” and, technically, they were. But no one ever talked about how their biome was directing their cravings and consumption or how toxins had affected the communication between the hunger and satiety hormones. I get it. I have dealt with it and still do, to some extent. I have experienced what my symptoms are when I eat what is correct for my body and when I do not. I am not advocating that it has to be done perfectly but the first step to accepting the change that needs to be made is an awareness of how our mind and emotions play into our daily choices and whether those choices are going to be an investment in our future health and wellness or an investment in a few bites of pleasure or pressure relief! It really is that simple when we boil it all down to the choices and control that we actually have.
Still, while changing the diet will change the biome rapidly, it does not guarantee that we have introduced the organisms needed to run the show smoothly. We now know that simply introducing a beneficial organism is not enough. Without broad diet variation, we are only providing nutrition for certain types of organisms. The prebiotic is the food for organisms and is crucial to their survival. Different organisms have different nutritional needs. So, how the heck do ya figure out what organisms to introduce and what to feed them? That is the cool thing. Now you don’t have to figure all that out! Brand new on the market are products that figure all that out for you. If you are wondering how it works, here are the basics:
Check the transit time of food with a pill. Many people are eliminating daily but the transit time is slow. If eliminating food eaten 3 days earlier, toxins become an issue, as does fermentation, which can cause brain fog, autoimmune, and many other conditions. If transit time is slow, the gut needs a tune up!
Wipe the non-beneficial organisms from the gut, including candida and some types of parasites.
Reseed the gut with an organ system approach. a. Foundational soil-based organisms 30 days b. Add in immune positive organisms 30 days c. Add in neurological organisms 30 days d. Add in skin biome organisms 30 days *Include the prebiotic specific to each type of reseed organism *There is are a few leaky gut products that will also be added
Maintenance with a. A diet free of seed oils, heavily processed foods, limit sugar (sorry it’s poison and once healthy, a few cheats are usually tolerated. Sugar is a toxin) b. Rotate pre and probiotics a-d above
Soon I will have tests available for the gut, oral, and vaginal biome. These tests will get very specific to the organisms that are out of balance, but the test is not needed to enroll in the gut program.
So, here is the question of objection that I get from about 50% of people inquiring about the TCD or Gut By
ome programs. “But do I have to do some kind of diet?”. I get it. What we put in our mouth can feel like the one last bit of control we have when life has handed us the thorny end of the rose bouquet!
I finally had to ask myself, but who is really in control when I choose to eat 2000 calories of toxic inflammatory stuff we call “food”. Ok, maybe I had the control to make my taste buds happy for a few minutes but what is the risk/reward of that momentary pleasure? I finally came to see those foods as being as much of an enemy to my health and vitality as lyme disease was. So yes, if you truly are sick and tired of being sick and tired, you do have to address the quality of the fuel you are putting into your body. This fuel is managed by the biome organisms. It is broken down and used in the cell to create biochemical processes that keep the body in balance. This biochemistry runs the endocrine system, whose job it is to create hormones. Those hormones are then released and need to be taken up by the cell. The cellular receptors must be intact and open to receive the nutrients and hormones needed to run the body. The microbiome is intricately involved in this process. The fuel for the gut cannot be cut out of the healing process.
In the next 6mo, I will be talking more about the topic of food as fuel that heals rather than “diet”. It’s a dirty word for some and we need to change our perceptions around how and why we eat. While eating is very social, our modern lives have brought us, and our health, to a point of major imbalance on the spectrum of eating for pleasure vs health. Once detox has the toxin bucket at a manageable level and the gut is balanced and no longer literally communicating with our brain to tell us to eat, we can choose to eat for pleasure sometimes. Committing to healing the gut doesn’t mean you can never have the chocolate cake again. Funny thing is, once we find alternative fuel, we often no longer crave the chocolate cake! But if we start eating it in an unbalanced way, we can change the biome and create a craving again. That happens to me with certain carbs and potatoes! This happens because just a few days of changing the diet can encourage some organisms to die and others to proliferate wildly. These non-beneficial organisms, such as candida, have commensal relationships with each other and they literally have a messaging system for their own survival. They create cravings for things that become to toxins to us but help them to survive. These non-beneficial organisms survive on a very acidic and sludgy environment. Did you know that parasites, candida, etc consume heavy metals? When we do not feed them, they get angry and make us feel discomfort. When we eat that chocolate cake, we feel better, so the brain has then associated the food as medicine! Except it is medicine for the organism we are hosting and they are really bad guests! When we try to eat healthy and these organisms die, they release heavy metals and other toxins and that further create true mental anguish for some people and they again feel compelled to feed these organisms and save them. There is much more to it that that but that is a very simplified version of these complex things that happen on the communication of the gut-brain axis. The other thing I will mention here is that weight-loss is also intricately tied to toxins and biome. Americans are literally carrying a huge load of toxins. I know longer look at an obese person the same way. I know they are highly toxic and I also know that they may not be able to control what they are eating because they do not have this knowledge. It is not just calorie counting! Some people hardly eat anything and are still over-weight. There is often much more going on and the current medical approach to obesity leaves much to be desired. And do not even get me starting on what I think about surgically removing the part of the stomach where ghrelin, the hunger hormone is made. Detoxing and rebooting the biome is a much better investment in weight-loss because it does not cost a body part, carries no associated risks, and can prevent a whole host of future disease from manifesting!
So, I am not going to sugarcoat it, people are not ready to heal until they are ready to use some reverse psychology on their mind and commit to a program of healing through changing habits, thoughts, and behaviors. Dr. West cured his stage IV melanoma by resetting his gut! While that is an amazing miraculous story, ideally, we are making changes to the biome and how we fuel our health before a physical disease manifests. Chronic symptoms are the precursor to disease. Toxins and cellular dysfunction are the root cause of disease, or health.
Therefore, I would encourage you to consider adding a gut reset program to your healing strategy. A gut reset is no longer a just a bottle of probiotics, a parasite cleanse, and a candida diet. There are easier and more effective ways to heal the gut. There are times I am suggesting the gut rest prior to starting the detox program and there are times I am recommending them to be done together. Gut health affects detox and detox affects gut health. Addressing both things are required to heal once symptomatic!
If you want to know more or schedule an assessment, please email Karan at NJSeaGoatCellularDetox@gmail.com
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