I answer questions posted by listeners/viewers

Here I address frequently-asked questions or important issues raised by listeners/viewers. 

Transcript

Why These Questions Matter

William Davis, MD 0:00

Hi everybody. Going through the questions and comments posted on my YouTube videos, I thought I'd go through some of the questions that have come up more than once, andor questions or comments that raise important issues that I think be best to address. Now, I I would remind you that about 80 to 90% of the questions raised on my YouTube videos are actually already answered in my many books, as well as my thousands of blog posts, my Define Health podcasts, and of course other videos on this YouTube channel. But uh Superbody, Super Gut, Wheatbelly, Wheat Belly Total Health, Wheat Belly 10 Day Grain Detox, Wheat Belly Cookbook, Wheat Belly 30 Minute Cookbook, Undoctors. I've addressed a lot of things, and you'll find the answers, almost all of them actually, in those books. If you don't have the books, my blog, WilliamDavesmd.com, thousands of posts there, going back, gee, about over 10 years, I believe. And those other properties. So the answers are already out there, so this is just an effort to make it a little bit easier, I suppose. So let's address some of the questions that have been posted on this YouTube channel. So Cozy Pillows asks, I've been steadily losing weight on keto six weeks. Just started eating this yogurt, half cup, I believe this person is talking about lactopus rotari yogurt, half cup per day and gained four pounds in five days. I'm not I'm really not sure if I should continue with it. That's great news because what you're doing is so I I encourage everybody to get away from this idea of losing weight. We now know with good evidence that losing weight, that is by most conventional methods, whether it's a diet or a bariatric surgery or even a pharmaceutical agent, we know that this has been tracked, over about 60,000 people have now been tracked as long as 20 years. People who lose weight by any method involving a reduction in calories will die several years younger. And your last few years are likely to be plagued by falls, fractures, frailty, loss of independence, and other health problems, even an acceleration of dementia. So we don't try to lose weight. What we try to do, and this is the conversation I've tried to cultivate with my super body book. Let's not talk about losing weight. Let's talk about specifically targeting loss of fat, but especially abdominal visceral fat, the most problematic form of fat, while preserving or even increasing muscle. So the Achilles heel, the problem with conventional weight loss methods is you lose muscle. You lose huge amounts of muscle. Established fact. About 25%, about a quarter of the weight you lose in any kind of calorie-reducing program is muscle. And that impairs your health and accelerates your death and the health decline. So if you gained weight on the yogurt, that's almost always muscle. That's good news. Personally, I gained 13 pounds of muscle, which shocked me when I first did this many years ago. By the way, in my early 60s, I gained 13 pounds of muscle uh over three weeks. My strength increased. The amount of weight I could handle using the machines in the gym went up by 50%. And you know what I was doing? I was going to the gym once a week for maybe 15 minutes. Because I don't know about you. I hate guy, I hate the whole process of going to the gym. I do it, I'll do other things like ride my bike and go for walks, etc. But I'll go to the gym for the to use the machines maybe 15 minutes once a week and a busy week twice, right? So you're gaining muscle. This is excellent news because it is a huge advantage to regain law. We're not trying to get you to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger did. We're trying to help you regain the muscle you've lost from aging, and if you made the mistake of losing weight by cutting calories in some fashion. Okay, so you want that muscle. That's good news. So would you should just no, why would you stop it? So it's several ways to track this. Look in the mirror. If your waist is smaller and your shoulders and neck and chest are firmer, you know you gain muscle. Your thighs, your body. Or use a bioimpedance scale that is a body composition scale, preferably one that you stand on and has handles also. We say hand-to-foot bioimpedance because that's a little bit more accurate than just foot-to-foot. That is no no handle part. There are many good devices that do that. Ideally, you also get a device that tracks visceral fat. You want one that scores your visceral fat. They don't actually measure it in kilograms or pounds, they give you a visceral fat score. That's a whole nother conversation. But think about that so that you can track loss of fat, loss of visceral fat, return of youthful muscle. Okay. Lance Bass, 3959, asks, no matter how much I sanitize, use different types of inulin, my yogurt, yogurt, comes out smelling like cow manure. I went a full year without a bad batch. Now the new strains seem to be bad. This is contamination, most likely from a species called Bacillus serious, C-E-R-E-U-S. Bacillus serious is everywhere. It's in your hair, it's in your it's on your hands, it's on your kitchen counter, it's in the air, it's on your utensils, it's ubiquitous. It's it's just a normal bacteria that floats everywhere and occupies our environment. So if you were a little bit lax or sloppy in preparing your yogurt, maybe you left the lid off too long, maybe while you were preparing the mix, right? Maybe if your inulin was contaminated, that'd be another. If your utensils are contaminated, especially something like maybe a spatula or spoon that has a joint. So some of these uh devices, for instance, have a handle, a plastic or wood handle, and then a plastic or silicone blade, and where the two meet, that's a source for contamination. If you used a blender, which you shouldn't use a blender, by the way, because uh mechanical blending kills microbes, but if you did, the blades can be a source of contamination, especially if you use a stick blender where the blades are recessed and very difficult to clean. So look for sources of contamination. Also look for sources of airflow that contaminates your yogurt. For instance, heating vent or air conditioning vent blowing near your yogurt, or a diffusing device you're using in your kitchen for nice smells that can contaminate. So look for sources of contamination. You throw it away. If it smells like that, it tastes, throw it away. Start from scratch. Be careful, clean your utensils, look for sources of contamination. Don't sneeze on it, don't cough on it, right? And try to keep the uh this thing uncovered for as brief a time period as possible. Because it's this these microbes like Bacillus serous are in the air. I can't know the S-E-M-A-J-O-I-R-A-N-I-L-O-M 7176. Could glyphosate buildup be the thing that keeps rotori and gastri and phantas, those are microbes, of course, from uh colonizing? Oh, absolutely. Yes. So uh when Monsanto many years ago first filed its patents for glyphosate as an herbicide, right? Roundup, it also filed patents for glyphosate as an antibiotic. Now, a truly beneficial antibiotic would kill pathogens, right? Species of microbes that cause diseases. A lousy antibiotic would be one that kills probiotic, beneficial species, and doesn't kill those pathogens. Well, guess which one glyphosate is? It kills beneficial species. It kills species like lactobacillus, bifidobacteria, like the ones that are listed in the question, uh fecalobacterum, all the beneficial microbes, but it doesn't kill fecal microbes that we say proteobacteria, like E. coli, salmonella, pseudomonas, pathogens. So while we need better evidence, I speculate that exposure to glyphosate, which of course is ubiquitous, it's in your water, air, clothing, skin, in your body, in your food, it's everywhere. Glyphosate selects for the proliferation of fecal microbes and kills off beneficial microbes. So unfortunately, it's very difficult to be entirely glyphosate-free. All we can do is minimize our exposure. For instance, try not to live near a golf course. Uh try to talk to your neighbors if you see them spraying Roundup or other herbicides. Of course, don't use it on your own lawn. Uh, buy organic food whenever possible, filter your water. All right, do what you can to minimize exposure. Sadly, unfortunately, we cannot be entirely free of this awful, awful herbicide. Now you're seeing this whole flood of lawsuits against Bayer, be it the German company that acquired Monsanto. So absolutely, glyphosate is an evil, and it probably is a big part of the reason why so much of the U.S. and the rest of the world now has SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Because glyphosate and exposure to antibiotics, perhaps other factors like food additives, kill off beneficial microbes that were suppressing fecal microbes into colon that allows over proliferation of fecal microbes into colon that then ascend into the small intestine, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. And these microbes, fecal microbes that invade the small intestine, live and die in a very short period of time of hours. They shed their toxic compounds into the bloodstream. That's called endotoxemia. What are the effects of endotoxemia? Well, mental emotional effects, anxiety, depression, hatred, anger. How about skin effects? Rosacea, psoriasis, eczema, how about joint effects, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, joint pain, fibromyalgia? In other words, we've got to re-examine, reconsider all we thought we knew about health in light of the contribution of microbes that have been disrupted by such things as glyphosate and other factors that now have come to dominate the small intestine, thereby entering the bloodstream with their toxic compounds and exporting their effects all throughout the body with all kinds of adverse effects. So, so we we we address that, right? We have minimize our exposure to glyphosate and other factors and then try to rebuild. If you don't know what I'm talking about, please see all those things I've mentioned. My super gut book, my blog posts, many, many blog posts on microbiome issues, of course, my YouTube channel, etc. Van Camra Woman, 7399, asks The Rotary yogurt I made and took religiously for 46 months turned my life around. I guess not a question, but it's not worth sharing anyway. Now at 70, I am pharma-free and feel like I did at 40, full of bounce, good health, and positivity. I take it less often now, but always have a batch ready. So I thank you. Uh reflecting the power of reorganizing, rebuilding a healthy microbiome. Now, I the rotori yogurt is not the only thing you should do. It's one of the things you should do. Lactobacillus rotori, recall, is a microbe ubiquitous in all mammals on this planet. Deer, moose, rats, beavers. Name a mammal, and that creature. Birds also, by the way, should have lactobacillus rotori in its gastrointestinal microbiome. It's a very unique microbe because it colonizes the full length of the GI tract, which is very unusual, from mouth to anus, and everything in between. So very important. And one of the great benefits of rotorite is that it produces what's called a bacteriocin, a natural antibiotic called routerine that's effective in killing fecal microbes like E. coli, salmonella. In other words, you lose rotorite because it's very susceptible to common antibiotics like amoxicillin or clorithromycin or whatever, right? That you took even 10, 20 years ago. It killed off all your lactobacillus rotorite and you lost all its benefits. We therefore restore this ubiquitous mammalian microbe. If we were to sequence the gastrointestinal microbiome of somebody who lived in the savannah of Africa, a hunter-gatherer, or someone who lives in the jungles of Brazil or Venezuela, the Amazonian jungle, or the highland mountainous jungle of New Guinea. These are hunter-gatherer populations, unexposed to antibiotics and other things. They all have rotary also. It's us as modern people exposed to antibiotics and other factors that have either reduced populations or outright lost the rotary. That's what we're doing. We're restoring things. By the way, that's the philosophy of my entire program. We're restoring things to the way it should have been all along, right? So all we're doing with rotary is restoring a microbe that you should have had all along. Now you get even better results if you engage in some other practices, like and taking lots of fermented foods, uh, make other microbial yogurts. It's not yogurt, by the way, right? It looks and smells like yogurt. It's not the stuff in the store. We're going to ferment other human-sourced microbes. That's what we're doing. We're fermenting human-sourced microbes, not the traditional yogurt-making or kefir species in those traditional foods. We're going to ferment human-sourced microbes. Raw Dane 14 says, I am histamine intolerant. I've had very bad acid reflux and get extreme headaches and brain fog throughout the day, especially when I eat certain foods. I saw your video on how the yogurt can fix things, but how can I do it when it's going to make me react? So this person has histamine intolerance. So, in other words, histamine-containing foods, many of them, such as especially cheese and wine, are really bad, can cause all kinds of reactions, skin rashes, emotional effects, asthma, wheezing, sinus congestion. The problem is not histamine. So histamine is a normal signal molecule, like insulin. So if you're a type 2 diabetic and have very high insulin, does that mean we should remove all the insulin from your body? Well, no. You would die or develop type 1 diabetes. Same thing. Histamine is a normal, healthy signal molecule. But rotarite produces histamine. So why is that a problem for some people? Well, people who've lost the dozens of microbial species in the gastrointestinal tract that previously metabolized histamine for you. Okay, so because you have dysbiosis in the colon, but more likely in this entire length of the small intestine, SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, part of that whole picture is you've lost many species that were supposed to be metabolizing histamine for you. You add this microbe that does produce a modest quantity of histamine, and it seems like you're intolerant. The problem is not histamine. The problem is not rotorite, lactobacillus rotori. The problem is the lost microbes that should have been there to process histamine for you. So before you take the rotori, you want to do other things. So if you're going to make the SIBO yogurt, for instance, which the uh current recipe is lactobacillus rotori, lactobacillus gastri, bacillus subtlis, right? Microbes chosen for the capacity to colonize the small intestine or or or germinate in the case of subtlis and produce bacteriocins and pushes back SIBO. That's what we're trying to achieve here. So you could do the STIBO yogurt, leave out the rotori and start with the other two, the gastri and the bacillus subtlis to start. Maybe do that for, I don't know, four weeks, eight weeks, something like that. Until you think you have a response, you can try to introduce the rotori then, see if you can tolerate it. Another option would be do the rotori, but very small quantities, maybe a tablespoon, not a half cup. Another option, use an antibiotic in some form. So in my super gut book, I talk about the two herbal antibiotic regimens that have actually some proof. There are other regimens, but they have no proof. You know, we want at least some evidence of efficacy before you spend money and do something. So the two regimens, herbal antibiotic regimens that have been shown to have efficacy are the Candibactin AR with Candibactin BR, or the FC Cytyl with dysbiocide. Okay, those two have been shown, and I've had many people do it that way. In other words, eradicate the fecal microbes in your small intestine that defines SIBO. Give it a couple of weeks or so, then try the SIBO yogurt. Because the SIBO yogurt, it can eradicate SIBO in many people. It also starts the process of rebuilding a healthy gastrointestinal microbiome. The antibiotics don't do a good job of that. They eradicate the bad guys and the good guys, by the way. So they're a little bit non-selective. But the SIBO yogurt does, in addition to further eradicating SIBO microbes in the small intestine to some degree in the colon, they also, the SIBO yogurt also begins the process of rebuilding because they're keystone microbes, important foundational microbes, that allows your gastrointestinal tract to regain other lost microbes. No one quite knows how that works. Is it from contact with other people? Is it contact with the environment? Is it that beneficial microbes were there all along, just present in very small numbers and sequestering the mucus barrier? Nobody knows. But know that the SIBO yogurt is, if you can get past that initial process with herbal antibiotics. You could also take conventional antibiotics like Zlyfaxin, but um I wouldn't generally recommend that. You know, antibiotics got us here. So I'm hesitant to recommend antibiotics in any form as the first strategy. But in some people, the histamine intolerant people are the exception to those who can't tolerate the SIBO yogurt very well. Annette 1720 says, I make bone broth, beef, turkey, and chicken. Cooking in the crock pot for 24 plus hours, is that the best way to get collagen? Absolutely not. Bone is a repository for the heavy metal lead. So when people make bone broth, they typically boil, as she does, for a prolonged period, and most add vinegar to help mobilize minerals. Theory is good, right? Mobilize calcium and magnesium and lead. So we now know that bone broth made that way has high levels of lead. Of course, the EPA and other government agencies will tell you there's no safe intake of lead, so you're adding significantly to your lead intake, lead exposure, in addition to lead pipes and lead paint and old homes, that kind of stuff. But you don't want to add to it with bone broth. You can make broth, but don't use prolonged boiling. Do only maybe two to four hours tops, don't add vinegar, and only use some bones. Use tendons and ligaments and meat and fat and skin and make soups and broths, but not specifically bone broth. You do not want lead toxicity. Now, in case other ways to get collagen, of course, organ meats, tough cuts of meat that you cook in a slow cooker, ways to mobilize collagen. But because it's kind of hard to know how much collagen you're getting, I think it's a good idea to add a supplement of collagen. Now, in with bovine sources, a full dose would be 20 grams per day. That's an evolving conversation as collagen products change and some other new sources are coming out. For instance, some marine sources, we may be able to get away with lower doses, but stay tuned because that science is only now evolving. Will Roche, 6691, asks, always had low triglycerides in the 50s, HDL 70 to 80, LDL around 150. My recent caronary calcium test was 240. Why? Well, because you're crippled. You're crippled by the stupidity of thinking that lipid or cholesterol testing identifies the causes of heart disease. It does not, okay? You need lipoprotein testing, one, that is like NMR, because you need to know how much small LDL particles you have. And I would say uh the the fact that your triglycerides are low is a good sign. It tends to suggest you don't have flagrant, terrible small LDL, but you can still have some. Because if all you did was address lipids or cholesterol fowls, you have not gone the full mile, right? What about vitamin D? Big factor. How about omega-3 fatty acids? Huge factor. How about wheat and grain consumption? Huge cause for heart disease. How about endotoxemia from SIBO? Big contributor. In other words, what you're telling me is I did very little to prevent having coronary atherosclerotic disease in the form of coronary articalcium on the heart skin. Yet I have heart, no surprise. You haven't addressed all the cause to address the causes. If you don't know what I'm talking about, see everything, see my blog, see my super gut book, see my super body book. It's also talked about in Undoctored and all my wheat belly books. Uh, another word, I I've talked about about this umpteen million times. Look for all the causes. So if you don't address And then, if you don't identify, then address the causes, of course you're gonna have coronary disease. Because, and unfortunately, the conventional solution is to address cholesterol with statin cholesterol, which is absurd. It's ridiculous. But to understand the full rationale, and by the way, if you want a full, I do have a three-part workshop on CT heart scans and carter calcium scores. It's an extensive, lengthy conversation of the entire rationale, why we reject cholesterol valves, why just addressing cholesterol valves does not stop uh heart disease, uh, nor carnal calcium score. That's in my uh membership website, the inner circle.dr Davisinfinite health.com. Uh but there's a lot of stuff in those other places as well. Uh last question. Be be shown, I think it is, one says, You mentioned iodine, but I have seen conflicting information on taking it if you have Hashimoto's. Is it considered safe? You know, I'm shocked. Something as basic to human health as iodine causes so much confusion, so much so that my colleagues often say, Oh, you don't need to get iodine, it's it's you get it from food. No, you don't. You get a little bit in food. So iodine deficiency has been, was the largest, one of the largest public health problems all throughout human history. And among its many consequences was a goiter. And a large thyroid gland on the on the neck. If you go to the Louvre or to Rome or any museum, take a look at the statues and the paintings from years past. I'm talking about prior to the 20th century, you'll see goiters everywhere. Because people were not getting iodine, especially if they lived inland, because all the iodine on this planet is in the ocean and in coastal areas. So coastal livestock, coastal plants, and of course the ocean with seafood, seaweed. So this was a huge public health problem. It was not uncommon for children to have huge goiters, it was not uncommon to people to die of the goiter that could compress the airway or invade structures in the neck, or lead to progressive hypothyroidism, where you gained a ton of weight, you start sleeping 14 to 18 hours per day, you had retained a huge amount of edema, then you went into a coma, it's called mixed edema coma. We've forgotten all this because in 1924 the FDA said, hey, we now recognize all these goiters and other problems are due to lack of iodine. How about you, salt manufacturers, add some iodine to salt? They launched a public health campaign by posters. Use more iodized salt, keep your family goiter-free. People embraced it, used a bunch of iodized salt, and it worked. Goiters essentially disappeared after 1924. Well, fast forward to the 1980s. Stupid advice to cut your saturated fat and cholesterol and eat more healthy whole grains and the explosion of processed, ultra-processed foods caused insulin resistance to skyrocket. Okay? Insulin resistance causes sodium retention by the kidneys. So it gave the apparent appearance of salt retention. That salt led to high blood pressure and other health problems. So the FDA and other agencies said, hey, quit using all that salt, even though we told you in 1924 to use more salt. So people listened, and iodine deficiency is coming back. It's not as bad as it used to be because the food source is now globalized. You might get avocados from Mexico, you might get blueberries from South America, etc. So it's not as bad as it used to be, but it is there. So everybody needs iodine unless you have an autoimmune thyroid condition, like Hashimoto's or Graves' disease, in which case getting iodine can activate the autoimmune process. So everybody needs iodine unless you have one of those autoimmune thyroid conditions, in which case what we do, what I do in my programs, is we try to turn it off. We try to turn that autoimmune process off. That involves getting rid of the gliden protein of wheat and grains, the initiator of many autoimmune diseases. It means addressing vitamin D and omega-3 fatty acids, deficiencies of which allow the emergence of autoimmunity, and then lastly, addressing SIBO and endotoxemia, a major driver of autoimmune thyroid disease. So once the thyroid antibodies come back down to normal range, then what we do is we test the waters with a low dose of iodine, like 50 micrograms. And then if you do okay, build up the dose to the target range that I think is about 350, 400 or so micrograms per day. Please ignore the absurd advice to take megadose iodine. That's unnatural and very dangerous. I've seen now too many people with iodine toxicity, not people with Hashimoto graves, just everyday people who were told this awful advice to take megadose iodine like Lugol solution or 20,000 micrograms or 30,000 micrograms, and we know this is not my speculation. We know with confidence it causes uh iodine toxicity, which shows up as uh hypothyroidism. So typical. I've had people come and they say, I understand, I'm taking iodine, I've gained 18 pounds, I'm sleeping 14 hours a day, my hair's falling out, my skin is dry, I can't think clearly. What's going on here? I said, Are you taking iodine? Well, yeah, 12,000 micrograms. They have iodine toxicity. We check their thyroid panel, the TSH is 18 or 20, they have flagrant hypothyroidism from iodine toxicity. So, you know, I often say half my job nowadays is educating, providing good information for people. But the other half is batting down misinformation. As good as these kinds of, you know, YouTube video state channels and blogs and all that stuff, as helpful as they can be, they're also vehicles for misinformation, especially people trying to market you something or make money from their brand of misinformation. So just be very careful. I hope you understand what I'm trying to do here is clear the clear the water, right? Try to make sure you're getting good information that's been well thought through, researched, and then put into practice over many, many years of experience. So with iodine, no, you can't take it until you normalize thyroid antibody levels, then maybe you can test at very low doses. And by the way, if it's going to reignite your autoimmune disease, it'll kind of be like having too much coffee. You'll get a hyperthyroid reaction out of it. By the way, I've never seen that happen. So I even though people have started with active Hashimoto's usually, normalize their antibody levels, reintroduce iodine. I've never seen uh autoimmune thyroid disease reactivated, given all the things I talked about. Vitamin D, omega-3s, diet change, SIBO, endotoxine, all that stuff. I've never seen reactivation of Hashimoto's. So, but it's so it's a theoretical risk. But know that you can do it because iodine has other benefits. It's probably important for breast health in females, it's probably important for salivary and oral health, and it may have other effects also. So humans should get iodine, but just wait till your thyroid antibody levels are normalized. Now, as I said before, if you want question other questions answered, please see all my books. There's a lot of redundancy in the books because I try to, for instance, cover the diet in every book. There's my blog posts, of course, many of them. YouTube channel, Defiant Health Podcast, uh, and of course my membership site. If you want some guidance, if you want to talk to me and other people about these kinds of things, then in my um inner circle.dr Davisinfinfinite health.com, we have those conversations almost every week.