The Berman Method
The Berman Method
Episode #225: Your Gut Controls Everything (And Most People Miss This)
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode of the Berman Method Podcast, Dr. Jake and Jenni Berman dive into one of the most important yet often overlooked pillars of health: gut function. As part of their longevity framework, they explain how GI dysfunction goes far beyond common symptoms like bloating, reflux, or irregular bowel movements—and why simply masking symptoms with medication doesn’t mean you’re actually healthy.
They break down how gut health is deeply connected to nearly every system in the body, from energy levels and sleep quality to brain function, mood, and even skin conditions. Through personal stories and patient examples, they highlight how food sensitivities and inflammation can show up in unexpected ways, reinforcing the idea that many chronic issues trace back to the gut.
If you’ve been dealing with persistent symptoms or feel like something is “off” despite normal labs, this episode will challenge how you think about your health. It offers a practical perspective on why testing, eliminating triggers, and actively healing your gut is essential—not just for symptom relief, but for long-term performance and longevity.
Check Us Out On Social Media -
Facebook: @bermanwellness , @physicaltherapynaples, @Berman Golf
Instagram: @berman_wellness, @bermanphysicaltherapy , @Berman Golf
Youtube: Berman Golf, Berman Physical Therapy
TikTok: Bermangolf, Bermanwellness
Email us -
drberman@bermanpt.com
jenni@bermanwellness.com
Check out our website -
www.bermanpt.com
www.bermanpt.com/wellness
www.bermangolf.com
Welcome And Ultimate Boomer Goals
Speaker 3And we're rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling, rollin' back on the Berman Method Podcast.
Speaker 4Treating problems, not symptoms. Dr. Jake Berman here, my beautiful co-hosts.
Speaker 2Jenni Berman, physician assistant.
Speaker 4Treating problems, not symptoms. David going against Goliath. Goliath being the corporate medical system, big pharmaceutical companies, your health insurance companies. We're going to try our best not to start off this episode with a rant on health insurance, and we're going to uh just skip the rant today. What do you think?
Speaker 2Yeah, if you want to listen to a mini rant, just listen to last week's episode.
Speaker 4Or any of the previous 200.
Speaker 2Yeah, no rants today. We're going to continue on with the five chemical properties to developing the ultimate boomer.
Speaker 4Love it. Absolutely love it.
Speaker 2Properties or pillars?
Speaker 4Properties, pillars, qualifications, bullets. I don't know. I think all of those are appropriate.
SpeakerOkay.
Speaker 4So very quick summary of what we're talking about. We've identified, Jenni and I have identified 10 markers, 10 things that contribute to arriving at 80 years old, feeling like you're 40 years old, and if you're already in your 80s, being able to kick your 90s ass. We've identified 10 things that predict at a very high level of confidence if you can do just that. And we've got five on the physical side, which is my side, and five on the chemical side, which is Jenni's side. My five things were stand on one leg, in the standing position, bend over, touch your toes, get down on the ground and back up again, walk for an hour, and not have any back pain or knee pain. And all of those contribute to quality of life in one way or another. Jenni's, we have five, and we're on the fourth one today. Yep. So number one was brain fog. Number two.
Speaker 2Sleeping through the night. Number three, uh, not napping in the afternoon, fatigue.
Drumroll, Walker, And A Detour
Speaker 4Yep. And then number four is drumroll. Walker's been doing this a lot lately.
Speaker 2He's been trying to do yeah, except he does it with his lips and his fingers. He's like he's motor boating.
Speaker 3Like, what are you doing? Who taught you that?
Speaker 2He's really starting to talk a lot more now, too. It's kind of fun. Although we have no idea what he's saying. Some and that's not true. We can figure a lot of things out.
Speaker 4You're like fluent walker, and I'm like, are you speaking Swahili? I look over at you and I say, How in the world did you just get that sentence out of what he just motorboated?
Speaker 2Well, yeah, a lot of things I can figure out, but sometimes he just points to something and it always sounds like milk. And I'm like, I don't know what you're saying, or pop pop. Seems like everything he says is pop-pop or milk. And sometimes whatever he's pointing at has nothing to do with milk or pop pop. So I still have to figure that out. But he he understands everything.
Speaker 4Holy cow, I could not believe it. So two weeks ago was the first time that I was really, really amazed at how well he was comprehending because my mom has been saying it for two months now. He understands everything that you tell him to do, and I'm like, Yeah, yeah, he does, sure. But two weeks ago, he was drinking milk in the morning. Yes, and he hid it somewhere. We had no idea where it was.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 4And we said, Walker, go get your milk.
Speaker 2Well, I was searching the house for it. I was holding him, searching the house for it because he kept asking for it. So we're searching the house. I'm looking high and low. Can't find this thing. Finally, I put him down and I said, Go find your milk.
Speaker 3And he walks from the kitchen down the hallway, in the bedroom, into the bathroom, gets up on the stool onto your kit your bathroom countertop and gets his milk. We're like, Oh, that's where it was.
Speaker 2He walked right to it and grabbed it. I was like, Well, I guess I didn't look there, but why did I just spend seven minutes searching when I could have just told you to go get it? And he knew exactly where it was. Um yesterday I was telling the story, and he was sitting in my lap when I was telling the story, and he gets off my lap, walks over to the kitchen table, and starts pointing. And I look at him and he's pointing at his milk because I said, Go get your milk, and so he did. Got up out of my lap and walked over to the kitchen counter. So, yeah, or kitchen table. Here he knows everything. It's weird.
What GI Dysfunction Looks Like
Speaker 4Pretty funny.
Speaker 2Yeah. Okay, so we're back to talking about GI dysfunction today.
Speaker 4Well, you didn't tell anybody what number dysfunction was.
Speaker 2Because you just you distracted us by doing the drum roll.
Speaker 4Number four is brrrrrrr.
Speaker 2GI dysfunction.
Speaker 4GI dysfunction.
Speaker 2See, this is so hard. We have really struggled to come up with what we're gonna call number four. Now we're calling it GI dysfunction, but that could mean so many different things.
Speaker 4Do you think we should call it number two and not number four?
Speaker 1Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3Dad joke for the win.
Speaker 2You've been good at those lately. Guess that's what happens when you have three of them. Okay, so GI dysfunction. So really, you know, top top things for GI dysfunction when we classify this or when we're putting people through our longevity assessment that we have in the office where we're actually questioning them about the five chemical and five physical. When it comes to GI dysfunction, the questions we're usually asking will start off with things like bloating, constipation, diarrhea, reflux, acid reflux, heartburn, right? And so we get through those questions and most of the time we'll get a yes on something, whether it was acid reflux or heartburn, or people will say, No, I'm good. And they'll be like, but what are you taking any medications? And they're like, Yeah, I'm taking the purple pill, omeprazol. And I'm like, okay, so you do have a heartburn. So you're not good. You're not good. Um, but, anyways, we'll talk about the more the actual GI symptoms, the bloating, constipation, diarrhea, abnormal bowel movements, uh, and the reflux heartburn, trouble swallowing is another one because that does absolutely have to do with the GI system. But then I'll get into talking about some other things in regards to migraines and eczema, psoriasis, um, joint pain, which are all going to come down to GI dysfunction as well. And believe it or not, well, actually, you should believe it by now if you've been listening to our podcast, but even your sleep and your energy have to do with your gut, right?
Speaker 4Everything freaking has to do with it.
Speaker 2But in the sense of giving you a score on your GI dysfunction, the most common, you know, areas where we're scoring it are gonna be from actually feeling symptoms GI-wise.
Belching, Endoscopy, And Omeprazole
Speaker 4Correct. And it could be just to go off an on a tangent real quick, what was it three or four years ago when out of nowhere I just started doing these little annoying burps?
SpeakerYeah.
Speaker 4And they're just these little tiny annoying burps that I couldn't control. And it once it started, I noticed it initially, but then it got to a point where I didn't even notice I was doing it anymore, and it was just annoying the hell out of Jenni. And she's like yelling at me, why what are you gonna do about these burps? Can you see her yelling at me right now through this this auditory or audio feed? What are you gonna do about these burps? I'm going, what do you mean? What am I gonna do about it? What do you think I should do about it? Aren't you my my GI person? So I end up going the traditional route. I went through Western medicine, I used my insurance. I thought we were gonna get through a whole lot of this. This is actually a good story. It wasn't a bad one. So I used my insurance, found an in-network uh GI doctor, and she recommends doing an endoscopy. So they put me in Twilight and they stick the tube or the camera down my throat, and she looks at everything, and she comes back out and says, There's nothing wrong. There's just one thing that could be the problem, and it was my pyloric sphincter. Is that the right one?
Speaker 2That's the sphincter that no, well, yeah, that the pyloric sphincter is at the stomach. I thought it was at the esophagus, yeah.
Speaker 4Where it meets the stomach. Yeah. Oh, is the pyloric sphincter on the other end of the stomach? The draining end?
Speaker 2No, but now you're testing my physiology, my anatomy and physiology.
Speaker 4On on the spot. It was the sphincter that that essentially closes down to separate your stomach acids from coming up into your esophagus.
Speaker 2Might have been. Okay.
Speaker 4And it was just a little bit dilated, meaning that it wasn't closing completely. So stomach acid was getting into my esophagus, and that's what ultimately led to the belching. And the doctor's plan of attack recommendation for this was to go in and cauterize it.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 4Right? Cuterize my sphincter so that it would close down and close that gap. And I'm going, what the F. And she goes, but before we do that, take the little purple pill.
Speaker 2Ameprazole.
Speaker 4So I started taking a meprz ameprazole, and the craziest thing happened.
Speaker 2It worked. It worked. It master symptoms.
Speaker 4Yeah. The belching stopped. Yeah. I said, This thing's magic. This pill is so tiny, it even threw me for a loop. A month into taking this little tiny pill, the belching was gone. I wasn't getting yelled at by my wife anymore. And I'm going, it worked.
Speaker 2Until you stopped taking it.
Speaker 4And then I go, okay, I'm gonna stop taking this thing now. And of course it came right back. And this led to my first ever round of getting the food sensitivity screen, and eggs showed up on it, black beans showed up on it, and there was one other big one that I was eating all the time. What was it?
Speaker 2Dairy.
Speaker 4No, dairy didn't show up on the first one.
Speaker 2Are you sure?
Speaker 4I'm a hundred percent sure. It was eggs, black bean, and I think it was tomatoes. Yeah, eggs, black bean, and tomatoes were the three big ones. And at that point, we had our own chickens. Yeah.
Speaker 2You were eating like five eggs a day.
Food Sensitivities And Skin Signals
Speaker 4At least five eggs a day. Because we had our own chickens. I just absolutely loved eggs. And I was like, are you freaking kidding me? So got rid of the chickens, quit eating eggs, and the craziest thing happened six weeks later, the belchin slowed down, and of course I didn't stay true to it on and off again, eating eggs, then on most of the time, and that's why an episode or two ago I said I'm on an egg hiatus, and here we are four weeks into being egg-free, and the belchin's significantly better again.
Speaker 2But this time you also had what why did I initially say this time around that you need to cut eggs back out besides that?
Speaker 4Because of the spots on my skin.
Speaker 2Yeah, he has white spots on his skin, and they got really bright white versus your dark tan skin.
Speaker 4Yeah, on the backs of my arms I had these white spots that a lot of people, what do they call them? Sunspots.
Speaker 2Sunspots, yeah.
Speaker 4A lot of people call them sunspots. You get them on the on your upper back or the backs of your arms, shoulders, shoulders. And Jenni goes, We're on the boat. And she goes, What the heck is that? And I'm going, what are you talking about? She takes a picture of it and I go, Oh my gosh, I look like a Dalmatian. Okay. I'm gonna eat eggs tomorrow morning, then I'm done with eggs.
Speaker 2Right, yeah. And that's what people don't realize is a lot of times the sunspots, the eczema, the psoriasis is all related to food sensitivities and gut health. Those little red bumps on the backs of your arms, they're very common these days, but um, the little red bumps, the little raised red bumps on the backs of your arms, like near the tricep area, very commonly a food sensitivity. Gluten, dairy, egg are some of the most common. It doesn't have to be that, it could be almond, could be yeast. We had dinner with a friend this weekend that was just telling us how we did a food sensitivity test on him for postnasal drip. He was having just chronic postnasal drip, nose running chronically. Uh, and we did food sensitivity allergy testing on him. And um, out of all the things that showed up, yeast has been his biggest trigger. He goes, I know immediately when I have yeast, my nose starts running right away. And there's yeast in so many things. I mean, mostly packaged things, right? Not whole foods, but I mean, it could be something totally you know off from egg, gluten, dairy, which are often the most commonly um known food sensitivities. It could be almond. Mine's almond.
Speaker 4Holy cow. Within minutes of you having almond, I can't breathe.
Speaker 2My throat like it feels like I have an elephant sitting on my esophagus when I have almond. I remember a year ago now, we were driving in an Uber and uh you were I forget, was I like trying I was taking really deep breaths or something, and you're like, what is wrong with you? And I was like, I just cannot breathe. Like, and it wasn't I couldn't breathe, I felt like I had an elephant sitting on my throat. And right after that weekend, I came back and redid my food sensitivity test, and I have always known I have tons of almond sensitivities and allergies. Um, I mean nut sensitivities and allergies. I'm like it from the very first time I did my sensitivity test, all the nuts lit up on me. Uh, and almond, I we had just gone right before we got in the Uber to get coffee, and I always get coffee with almond milk in it because I don't do dairy. Um, and almond and coconut milk both have less carbs than oat milk. And but a lot of places don't have coconut milk. So I went with the almond and immediately like my throat felt like an elephant was sitting on me. So just to kind of come back full circle, is the GI symptoms that we talk about don't just have to relate to bloating and abdominal pain, constipation, diarrhea. There's tons of different symptoms associated with poor gut health. And again, this could even come down to mood changes, depression, anxiety, sleep dysfunction, fatigue, cortisol levels being high, food sensitivities. I mean, um, blood sugar control. I talked about this again this past week. I'm like, your blood sugar instability may be directly related to a food that you're eating, not really the carbohydrates in the food, but the inf inflammation related to the food. So we have to assess the gut health to as a primary pillar to your longevity and your health and your brain function.
Why Gut Testing Should Be Routine
Speaker 4You have to, and this really comes back to my rant from last week's episode talking about the horse or the automobile back in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The automobile first became commercially available, and it's like, no, I'm gonna I'm gonna stick to my horse because this is tried and proven, right? This is what this is the way we do things, right? But then there were some early adopters that got on the bandwagon and fast forward, can you even imagine if the only mode of transportation was a horse? Same thing's true today, where 20 years from now, it's going to be every single checkup you do, we're looking at your gut. Like there, there's no way that 20 years from now, it's not a common practice to look at your gut, your food sensitivity. It's not possible. I'm going on record right now, 2026, or whatever the date is today. Look back on this 20 years from now, let's archive this episode. I can't imagine a world where 20 years from now, it is not a common thing. Uh uh, one of those things that must be done on a regular basis to look at your gut.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 4I can't imagine it.
Speaker 2I don't think you're wrong. And hopefully, in 20 years from now, our food will be a little better in terms of you know reflecting to what it was 60 years ago with the quality of our food and the shorter short um shelf lives of our food, so that the it is not as difficult to have a healthier gut. But that's a topic for a different time.
Speaker 4Yeah, that's like a whole different thing right there. I hope you're right. I don't know that it's possible, but I do hope you're right.
Speaker 2All right, so we have to look at gut health as a pillar to your longevity. Like I said, the brain function, the blood sugar control, the sleep, the cortisol, the hormonal balance. Our gut health plays into all of this, and we have to make sure that we are achieving a healthy gut to accomplish the five chemical balances.
Speaker 4Yeah, it's it's just non-negotiable. It's like, wait a minute, I've got this automobile here, back to the automobile again, and I'm not gonna check the oil. Like, what?
Speaker 2Yeah, you can't do that. Sludge. Sludge builds up. Has anybody heard the word sludge?
Speaker 4If you've had any gallbladder issues, you have like checking your oil is the number one most common thing that I was gonna say a statistic, but I don't know that it would be true or not. In my world, in my world, in the world that I grew up in, 99% of everybody knew that the number one thing you did was check the oil. But I know that there's a world where you people don't even have a license. I was just doing a spin, um, my spin class or my uh Peloton class this morning with Robin, and one of the first things she says is she doesn't have a driver's license. Like she really, yeah, she let it go. She lives in New York. You don't drive. Yeah, and she goes, Yeah, now I have to get my license back, so she's got to go through all this DMV stuff. And I'm going, I can't even imagine. So why would Robin know to check the oil?
Speaker 2I guess you only travel with your passport at that point if you don't have a driver's license. I'm serious. Like, think about all the things you need a driver's. That's besides the point. Okay, let's let's focus. Stay on task, Jenni. Maybe maybe I should look at my own gut health for my focus.
Speaker 4Seriously.
Speaker 2Or my own cortisol level.
Speaker 4You put the macaroni cheese in the taco meat last night.
Speaker 3Stop that, those were the best tacos I've ever had in my life. So Jenni is making our dinner last night, and it's taco sundae, and she pours the macaroni and cheese.
Speaker 4Oh, by the way, have we talked about my thing is tacos and macaroni and cheese?
Speaker 2So weird.
Speaker 4It's not weird, it's delicious. Once you have it, you'll never not have it. So I highly recommend macaroni and cheese and tacos as a pairing. So Jenni pours the cheese from the macaroni and cheese into the ground taco meat.
Speaker 2It's dairy-free cheese, at least.
Speaker 3And she goes, Oh, F bomb. And I'm going, Are you okay? She goes, I just effing did this.
Speaker 2I did not drop them any F-bomb. The kids were there. I did not drop F bomb.
Speaker 3They weren't there at the time.
Speaker 2Yeah, it was because she said, What happened, Mom? What happened, Mom? I'm like, so the mac and cheese, it's the Dia, gluten-free, dairy-free mac and cheese that we make for the kids and Jake, not Jenni. But yeah, it's powdered cheese. And I go to pour it in, and I see on the thing it says cheddar, and I was like, that's weird, thinking it was the taco seasoning. And after I did it and I started mixing it and smelling it, I'm like, you've got to be joking me. Just poured the packets of cheese into the meat. And you go, can you get it out? And I'm like, no, it's powder. Number one. Number two, I'd already started mixing it.
Speaker 4Well, my thought at that point was if it was all piled in a top on the top, you could scoop it out with some of the taco meat into the noodles, and I'm going, Maybe we just invented something really cool.
Speaker 3Venison taco mac and cheese.
Speaker 2Like the spaghetti fajitas.
Speaker 3Oh my gosh, spaghetti fajitas. Did we talk about that on this yet?
Speaker 2We're not talking about it right now. So, anyways, we mixed the cheese. So then I poured the taco seasoning in too. And I was like, I just made our taco meat very high calorie by adding a packet of cheese to it. But here nor there, it tastes delicious.
Speaker 4Oh my gosh, it was amazing.
Speaker 2Nice and creamy.
Speaker 4We're gonna start doing this from here on out.
Speaker 2We're not. Okay. Anyway, my brain fog. The point of this was do I have brain fog? And my my argument is that I just have a thousand tabs open in my brain at all times between mom tabs and work tabs. But maybe I do have some brain fog. I should try some NAD.
Test, Heal, Recheck, Then Challenge
Speaker 4Oh my gosh. Okay, so let's bring this thing back together. We started off with the number one thing on Jenni's chemical side is brain fog.
Speaker 2Brain fog. Apparently are happy.
Speaker 4Number two was sleeping through the night. Sleeping through the night.
Speaker 2Number three is fatigue, taking naps.
Speaker 4Yep. Number four is now gut health.
Speaker 2Yes.
Speaker 4And my dad joke was maybe number four should be number two. But it in all seriousness, this is the big one. This is a really, really big one that 100% of you listening should be looking into. Seriously, 20 years from now, this is gonna be like checking the oil in your car. Assuming that it's a got gas car, not an electric car. Yes, I know there's somebody out there saying, Well, my car doesn't have oil. Okay, well, right now, my car, my truck, has oil and it burns fuel. Here we go. You need to check your gut. You have to do it. You have to do a food sensitivity screen. And the ch the thing is you have to do it regularly. Just because it says something today doesn't mean it's not gonna change because ideally, the way that it works is you get your food sensitivity results back. You get your blood test results back, and it's gonna give you information. Based off of that information, we're going to make adjustments. We're gonna implement those adjustments for a minimum of six weeks, most likely 90 days, right? Right, right, 90 days to give the body, give your gut a chance to react, heal, react, adjust, yes, yes, heal. Then we need to check it again in 90 days and see did it really help? Did it trend in the right direction, or did it not?
Speaker 2Yes, and most of the time we're not rechecking specifically the sensitivities or the allergens, but we're rechecking inflammatory markers, and then we're doing a process of challenging some foods to challenge the gut and see symptomatically how we're doing. So we have a very specific protocol on gut healing and reintroducing and rechallenging and checking these inflammatory markers again at the eight, 10, 12-week mark. Yeah.
Speaker 4Right. So just to use some uh superficial numbers, you do your food sensitivity screen the first time, a hundred things show up. I can't eat anything that I like to eat anymore. My life is over. Well, that's not necessarily true because all hundred of those are not necessarily primary. A lot of them are most likely secondary, meaning that there's one or two or three out of the hundred that are the most inflammatory. They start the inflammatory process, and now your gut is sensitive to these other things that they would not normally be sensitive to because it's pissed off.
Speaker 2Correct. Just like your environmental allergies. Your environmental allergies are worse because of your gut health and your food sensitivities. But, anyways.
Speaker 4Yeah. Well, no, it's the it's the pine pollen, it's the time of year, it's spring.
Speaker 2I've had it my whole life. It's it's the environment.
Speaker 4Yeah. No, that's actually come from your gut. Speaking of that, I used to get it really, really bad. Every single May, April, April, May are usually the driest months out of the year here in Naples.
Speaker 2You lived on Zertec and Flonase.
Speaker 4Lived on Zertec and Flonase, and it's just like this is my life. I get bad allergies. No, it's crazy. Craziest thing happened after I started healing my gut.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 4Like I don't live on it anymore.
Speaker 2You don't have pollen allergies anymore.
Allergies, Snoring, And Diet Blowback
Speaker 4Yeah. And here's here's me um admitting when I go hard in the paint on Saturdays and I go way off my diet and I eat a bunch of crap, I gotta take a Zertec and Flonase, or I wake up with sore ribs because Jenni is kicking me and punching me all night long.
Speaker 2It's like you went to Nashville to record for golf, and he was gone for three days, and he comes home the next day, and I was like, he comes home late, late Friday night, goes to sleep. Saturday, he we wake up, and I go, What in the world did you eat while you were gone? Your snoring was the loudest I've ever heard you snore. It was so bad. And he was like, Yep, ate all the things, and I'm oh my gosh, it was so bad.
Speaker 4I had two cheeseburgers with the buns, cheese, bun, some sandwich. And this massive sandwich from this new place up there. I don't even know what it's called, but it used to be a smoothie king, and it's now this new sandwich place. And oh my gosh, this thing was amazing. I was in heaven eating this thing. I'm like, wow, Jenni's gonna hate me when I get home.
Speaker 2You're going on a detox.
Final Push And Next Pillar Tease
Speaker 4Okay, so we're good.
Speaker 2All good. Yes, get your gut checked, and then tune in for number five coming up next.
Speaker 4All right.
Speaker 2Ciao for now.