Metabolic Health OG William Davis, MD - #39

Can you possibly identify if someone's at risk of a heart attack or cardiac arrest? That question run through Dr. William Davis’ mind when his mother died due to cardiac death. He found the helpful predictor and the most common cause of coronary disease, and it is not cholesterol as we were led to believe. The culprit? Grains and sugars. He counters different notions about health and treatments and addresses the factors that allow the disease to emerge in the first place: diet, lack of nutrients, and disrupted microbiome.
 
We talked about his transformation from a traditional cardiologist to one of the leading voices in the metabolic health field. We discuss the role of supplements, hormones, and the surprising importance of probiotics in restoring and maintaining metabolic health. We finish up with an unexpected twist - symptom-specific probiota.

Quick Guide:
0:27 Guest Introduction
2:35 Can we identify that someone’s at risk of sudden cardiac death?
9:16 We can’t consume grass and digest the proteins down to amino acids
14:52 Address the diet
21:25 To not just give drugs, but to actually treat the cause
24:26 The physicians’ willful ignorance
28:31 Challenges of getting the message out in mainstream media
33:24 Super Gut
39:20 The SIBO process
47:54 How microbiome benefits our health

Get to know our guest:
Dr. William Davis is a cardiologist by training and is knowns as one of the forefathers of the metabolic health movement. He authored several books including Wheat Belly, Undoctored, and Super Gut.
 
“But the key here is once you look past all the nonsense, we're told, cut your fat, eat more healthy whole grains, you do the opposite, eat more fat, never eat grains, wonderful things happen.” - Dr. William Davis

Connect with him:
https://www.facebook.com/DrDavisInfiniteHealth/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/drwilliamdavis/
https://drdavisinfinitehealth.com/

 If you like what you hear, I wanna make it easier for you to take action on your health.

Head over to i fix hearts.com/book to grab a copy of my book, Stay Off My Operating Table, and if you're ready to go deeper or talk to someone from my team, just go to i fix hearts.com/talk. 

Stay Off My Operating Table on X:

• Dr. Ovadia: @iFixHearts
• Jack Heald: @JackHeald5

Learn more:

• Stay Off My Operating Table on Amazon
• Take Dr. Ovadia's metabolic health quiz: iFixHearts
• Dr. Ovadia's website: Ovadia Heart Health
• Jack Heald's website: CultYourBrand.com

Theme Song : Rage Against
Written & Performed by Logan Gritton & Colin Gailey
(c) 2016 Mercury Retro Recordings

Any use of this intellectual property for text and data mining or computational analysis including as training material for artificial intelligence systems is strictly prohibited without express written consent from Dr. Philip Ovadia.

Transcript

Metabolic Health OG William Davis, MD

SUMMARY KEYWORDS 

people, microbes, Wheat Belly, microbiome, called, disease, sibo, wheat, eat, coronary disease, yogurt, health, hear, book, years, told, device, william davis, gut, weeks 

SPEAKERS 

William Davis, MD, Jack Heald, Dr. Philip Ovadia 

Jack Heald   

Well, welcome back. It's the Stay Off My Operating Table podcast with Dr. Philip Ovadia. Thank you for being here today. We've got somebody that I've been super excited to talk to. Dr. William Davis, author of Wheat Belly and several other books. Phil, thanks for getting him. Dr. Davis. Bill. Welcome. It's good to have you here. 

William Davis, MD   

Oh, thank you. Glad to be here.  

Jack Heald   

Phil, tell us why, why we grabbed this guy. 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

Sure thing I want people to hear. Yeah, this is, this is really a bit of an honor. You know, Dr. Davis is I would say one of the forefathers of, you know, our current metabolic health movement. And his book, Wheat Belly, which came out over a decade ago was really groundbreaking, and earth shattering in a number of ways. And he had a number of subsequent books, including Undoctored. And now most recently, Super Gut. And, you know, one of the things that has always sort of attracted me, I guess, to Bill is his similar background to mine, Bill as a cardiologist by training. And, you know, as we're going to get into, during this discussion, had really early on, I would say earlier than most realized, you know, where our medical system was kind of going off track and started talking about that. So I'm really excited for this conversation. And I think a good place to start the conversation would be to hear from you, Bill, a little bit more about that sort of early part of your journey, how you went from, you know, the kind of typical mainstream medical cardiologist and training that we all receive, and how you realize so early on, we were, you know, headed down the wrong pathway. 

Jack Heald   

Yeah, I'd love to hear that. 

William Davis, MD   

So I came from the same world as a doctor of Ovadia. That is, I would refer people for bypass surgery to Dr. Ovadia’s colleagues. I did angioplasty and stent, implantation, all that sort of thing. But I was brought to Milwaukee to set up the new technologies. There are some hospitals here a little behind the times, they brought me in to bring him up to speed but six months into my move here, my mom died of sudden cardiac death after a successful two vessel coronary angioplasty.  

Jack Heald   

"Angioplasty?" You gotta remember, you don't have... This is not a medical audience. We're dummies like me. What's the angioplasty? 

William Davis, MD   

So it was a balloon angioplasty, they dilated balloon open, open an artery. So she had this New Jersey where I grew up, and she died about four months later. But it was a vivid illustration to me that this disease that so my mom died of the disease I managed every day, that Dr. Ovadia bypasses every day, so she died of this disease. It was an illustration of how unsatisfactory it is to manage a disease in a hospital in a cath lab in an operating room. Well, back then, this is this is about 26, 27 years ago, long time ago, I asked, Well, gee, what could I have done to identify the fact my mom was at risk of sudden cardiac death, heart attack, etc.? Is there something you can do a year ahead of time, five years, 10 years? Well, the world relies on this ridiculous idea that cholesterol is the predictor. Of course, that that is an absurdity. It should have been discarded 40-50 years ago, but it makes so much money, that it's still used as a crude and virtually useless predictor of cardiovascular events. Well, back then - this remains true today - the only really helpful predictor is a coronary calcium score, generate an ICT heart scan, this goes so far back that we were doing an electron beam tomography device, the precursor to the multidetector CT scanners. So we're scanning people left and right in Milwaukee. And when you look for hidden heart disease, these are people like you and me going for a walk, riding our bikes, going to work, going to school, not having chest pain, not having heart attacks, just going about their business. But when you look for silent, early heart disease, you see it everywhere. What do you do about it? Well, 25 years ago, all we had was statin cholesterol drugs, right? baby aspirin, low fat diet, low saturated fat diet, exercise, so we did that. We helped publish these data. If you do nothing, and your score, let's say is 500 - normal is zero - so 500 is a bad score. If you do nothing to score is going to go up about 25% per year and you get closer and closer to heart attack, sudden cardiac death, needing bypass needing stent whatever. What if you go on a high dose of statin cholesterol drug baby aspirin low fat diet exercise program? How much does a score go up 25% per year, my colleagues to this day call that optimal man medical therapy and it does not work. Certainly from a cardiac coronary calcium score perspective, well, what do you do I have 1000s of people freaking out on me. Unfortunately, some of my unscrupulous colleagues would say, "Oh, Jack, you need the real test heart catheterization, and a preventive stent implantation or bypass." 

Jack Heald   

Preventive stent implant?  

William Davis, MD   

Yes, it's malpractice. It's malpractice annually on all the time. It's done all the time. 

Jack Heald   

Bill, just a minute. One of the one of the ongoing jokes in this podcast is I, I came into this deeply cynical about the medical environment in the medical system. And really trying to be less cynical and filled keeps telling me stuff that has convinced me I haven't been cynical enough. Okay, carry on. Preventative spins, I'm just yeah, my mind is blown. 

William Davis, MD   

Sadly very common, because people are terrified. And that's used. Jack, you're a walking time bomb. I can't be responsible for your safety when you leave here. If you don't take my advice and go through the procedure. They're very good at that. Well, what do you do though, if you want to honestly put a stop to this? Well, it took some zigzagging some trial and error. But it led to lessons like this when you add vitamin D to the mix. It was the first time I saw coronary calcium scores drop dramatically. I mean scores of 700, dropping to 380 or something like that. It also led the lessons that we don't we did we ignore cholesterol panels, throw them away, ignore them, left them out. And we do lipoproteins the real test the particles in the bloodstream that actually cause heart disease for which cholesterol is meant to be a crude indirect marker. But you can actually measure the lipoproteins very easy have been doing for over 25 years. And you'll see that by far and away the most consistent cause for coronary calcium score for coronary disease is an excess of small LDL particles. And so I asked, "what foods cause small LDL particles?" Well, this science was well sorted out from UC Berkeley, California-Berkeley. from Hopkins, a number of centers had done these studies. An excess of small LDL particles is caused only by grains and sugars, period, not fat, not butter, not saturated fat, not beef. Grains and sugars, the amylopectin-a of grains and sucrose, fructose and related sugars. So I had people because they're all terrified having high scores, they have silent coronary disease, we take wheat and wheat grains and sugar out of the diet. And small LDL drops from a typical number of like 1800 Nano moles per liter, particle count per volume to zero, or something close. In other words, it wasn't just the 20% improvement 30 It was decimation obliteration of that abnormality, in most cases. But, people would come back and they say I did it. But you didn't tell me I'd lose 73 pounds. You didn't tell me my type two diabetes would go away. And I'd have to get off insulin and my three Diabetes drugs you wouldn't tell me to tell me, I'd have to get off my three blood pressure drugs. My blood pressure was so low. You didn't tell me that my psoriasis would go away. You didn't tell me. In other words, I stumbled for the purposes of coronary calcium scores and eradication of small LDL particles. I stumbled into something. That's what I asked, well, what the hell is going on here? That if we do something completely contrary to all conventional dietary advice from the US government, US Department Health Human Services, USDA, American Heart Association, American Diabetes Association Academy of Nutrition Data, we do the exact opposite and spectacular breathtaking things happening. First, I thought I was wrong. How could this possibly have been course as I dug into what agribusiness had been up to the last 40 years became clear why this all happened. 

Jack Heald   

Okay, I don't want to interrupt you, but you can't drop a nugget like that and not expand on it. "Agribusiness." 

William Davis, MD   

So, wheat in particular wheat, of course, is the dominant grain. It's pushed on us by all by industry, by government agencies by agencies that dispense dietary advice. Well wheat is now not a four and a half foot tall five foot tall plant it is a an 18 inch tall, thick stock, large seed, large seed head plant that was put through essentially 1000s of genetic experiments in the 60s, not for evil purpose, but to increase yield per acre, to help feed the poor, the hungry of the world. And it worked. Doctor Norman Borlaug, who is the chief engineer of this process from University Minnesota, developed the highest Little semi dwarf strain of wheat with a yield of about four to eight fold more per acre, which is huge. He was he was he won the Nobel Peace Prize, he was celebrated. And this became the dominant form of wheat in the mid-1980s. Now, there's a lot of things wrong with this thing. It's changed dramatically, and the proteins in it are also changed dramatically. And there was ever, never a question of suitability for human consumption. But one of the things that change, for instance, is the Gliadin protein. And that changed the gliadin protein caused a fourfold increase in celiac disease. That is the intolerance of the gluten in wheat. It also caused the gliadin protein to be a much more potent appetite stimulant. So the glide and so we have to remember that all grains are seeds of grasses. Last I checked, you guys aren't ruminants. You only have a one stomach not four or five. So we can't consume grasses. And yet we try. And when we do, when you ingest the seeds of grasses like grains, you can't digest all the proteins down to amino acids, like you would say, an egg or a piece of pork chop, you break them down into peptide fragments that are four or five amino acids long. And these have opioid effects. They go to the brain, and they stimulate appetite. This is research by the way from the National Institutes of Health. This is not some airy fairy thing, some a naturopath made up this is this is this is genuine science. That was one thing. Farmers and agribusiness selected strains of wheat for increased content of something called wheat germ agglutinin and phytates, wheat germ agglutinin. They like these things because they're pest resistant. It allows the weak plant to resist moebs and insects. So they chose strains with greater and greater and greater quantities of wheat germ agglutinin and phytates. Well, wheat germ agglutinin is a problem because it's a very potent bowel toxin to humans, extremely potent. And the phytates are known to bind all positively charged minerals like calcium, magnesium, iron, zinc, and you poop them out in the toilet. So we're told you must eat grains for fiber. And for B vitamins. We're not told that they virtually guarantee numerous mineral deficiencies like magnesium and calcium and iron, zinc. And so And there's other problems with modern wheat. But the key here is once you look past all the nonsense, we're told, cut your fat, eat more healthy whole grains, you do the opposite, eat more fat, never eat grains, wonderful things happen. 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

Yeah, it's really just, you know, inspiring to hear, you know, what science, what medicine is supposed to be, you know, we, as physicians are supposed to be curious, we're supposed to be asking these questions. And most importantly, we're supposed to be, you know, looking at the results that we are achieving with these, you know, interventions. And, you know, when we're seeing that they're not working, when we're seeing that heart disease remains the number one killer in the United States and worldwide, you know, without any noticeable impact, despite what we're supposed to be, you know, the treatment, we figured out the cause, and we have the treatment, and we just need to lower everyone's LDL cholesterol. And yet, we haven't really seen any meaningful impact on heart disease, you know, more physicians need to be asking questions like this, and need to be saying, you know, why? Why are we continuing to do this, it was okay, to have the theory, it was okay to test the theory. But we have all the evidence that we need that the theory is wrong. And yet, if you question these, you know, these basic things now, you get labeled as you know, heretics and quacks and, and things like that. So, you know, it's just, it's just so inspiring to hear and amazing to hear. And, you know, the, the gut toxicity aspect of all of this certainly leads into your new book, great book called Super Gut, you know, highly recommended to anyone interested in health and metabolic health. But realizing that, you know, again, the foods that we eat are the primary determinants of our health. And, you know, one of the ways that the foods that we eat can be damaging our health is by damaging our gut. And I'd love to hear a little bit more about you know, your, how you came to realize this, and then, you know, sort of some of the concepts that you've talked about in the new book to help people reverse the problem and heal their guts and heal their health. 

Jack Heald   

Yeah, please. 

William Davis, MD   

Well, so doing my basic programs before Super Gut, Wheat Belly, Undoctored, etc. I saw people have spectacular successes and the program is very simple. It's eat no wheat, no grains, we cap our net carb intake to 15 grams net carbs per meal no more than and then address several nutrients that are lacking in modern life like magnesium we drink we drink filtered water and water filtration removes all magnesium but you have to do that because there's sewage and herbicides and other things in water. So we supplement magnesium, we don't get vitamin D. Because most of us work indoors. As we age, we lose the capacity to activate vitamin D in the skin even with sun exposure. Iodine, I'm in Wisconsin, but this area Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, etc. used to be called the goiter belt, and people have forgotten that that goiters were a huge public health problem all throughout human history. If you're ever in Italy, or Rome, or Paris, or any place that has old museums have Greek statues and Roman statues, look at the statues and look at their thyroid glands right here in the neck, you'll occasionally see goiters on the statues actually a huge problem all throughout human history. So iodine was a solution. But we've been told use less salt because the FDA misinterpreted the cause for hypertension, I thought it was salt. excess salt use even though the FDA originally told us to use iodized salt, not recognizing that it was too silly advice to cut fat, eat more healthy whole grains that causes insulin resistance and sodium retention. So we don't limit salt. And we get iodine from supplements like kelp. And we of course, supplement omega three fatty acids because most modern people don't eat brains anymore. And don't can't eat enough fish because we have mercury exposure and cadmium from shellfish. So we address diet, those handful of nutrients, that handful of nutrients, by the way all address insulin resistance. So a lot of stuff unwinds when you do this. But it also became clear that while people enjoyed huge benefits, sometimes they fell short. They say things like yeah, I lost 58 pounds, I'm no longer type two diabetic, but my hemoglobin a1c hasn't come down all the way. It was 12.3%, which is terrible. That's at index a long-term blood sugar. It's now 5.9%. Much better, but not perfect 5.0% would be perfect. Or I'm intolerant to tomatoes, and eggplants - nightshades - and I can't eat them. I still had that intolerance. So it was clear that there was something residual despite the great success. So I looked for why would this be? I looked in the microbiome. And I found answers. One of the things that we all have to accept as, as modern people, we have decimated our intestinal microbes, we've killed off hundreds of species. And when you lose... These species did good things for us. When you lose those species unhealthy, mostly stool species proliferate, like E coli Klebsiella Citrobacter, they proliferate. And in many people, I think an over 100 million Americans, easily over 100 million Americans, these stool microbes have ascended up into the small bowel, the ileum, jejunum, duodenal, and stomach, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or SIBO. And when they die, so when you have 30 feet of microbes, trillions of them living and dying rapidly, they only live for hours. They don't live very long. But they live and die. When they die. Some of their breakdown products enter the bloodstream, very important process called endotoxemia. But that tells us now with confidence how microbes in the GI tract can be experienced as depression, or Alzheimer's dementia in the brain, or as the joint and muscle pain of fibromyalgia, or restless leg syndrome, or in the skin as rosacea or psoriasis, or as food intolerances. Whether it's night shades, FODMAPs, legumes, fruit, fructose, all the different kinds of food intolerances people have go away when you address the intestinal microbiome, especially that problem of 30 feet of microbes. SIBO. 

Jack Heald   

Wow. Okay, you said when they die, they some of the what breaks down from their bodies enters the bloodstream through a process known as? What 

William Davis, MD   

Endotoxemia, because the primary thing that enters the bloodstream is endotoxin. 

Jack Heald   

Yeah, it's taught you become toxic through something that happens internally. Okay. 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

Yeah, very, very fascinating stuff. It actually, you know, ironically, I started my, you know, career in medical school doing research on you know, endotoxin, LPS is another name for it. And, you know, its effects. I was working in a trauma surgery lab at the time, which is certainly, you know, another thing that can cause endotoxemia. But it's just interesting to circle back to it. And, you know, I've admitted many times, I think, on this show, you know, some of my failings as a young doctor, and, you know, I'll admit now that, you know, hearing things like this, and talking about the microbiome, you know, five, 7, 10 years ago, you know, I would have said, this is, you know, woo, alternative medicine, you know, quack stuff. And now, you know, I have fully come to realize how important it is, and you know, how, you know, how much it is actually helping patients to get better. And, you know, you and I have these similar experiences where, you know, for the first time in our careers, we are really curing people of diseases, we are reversing their diseases, not just treating the symptoms of it. And, you know, talk a little bit about what a difference that is, you know, as a physician to be able to actually help people improve instead of just, you know, manage their suffering better, which is really most of what we were trained to do as physicians 

William Davis, MD   

You know, I find one of the hardest things for people to embrace, is to get rid of this idea that we're going to treat diseases. In other words, if we're going to treat Type Two Diabetes, we give you drugs like insulin to reduce blood sugar, but that has nothing to do with the cause. And in fact, if you give somebody insulin, it makes the disease much worse. One of the effects of insulin is a fabulous weight gain drug, it's very common to gain 25 to 50 pounds in the first year, you're put on insulin, so it makes the situation worse. So that's treating. So treating is filled with problems. So I tell people, This is tough for people to grasp. But let's address the factors that allowed disease to emerge in the first place. Because regardless of the label given to you, whether it's called obesity, or type two diabetes, or coronary disease, or migraine headaches, or rosacea, or psoriasis, or ulcerative colitis, or Eropa syndrome, let's address the common causes: diet, nutrient lack of nutrients and disrupted microbiome. And as Dr. Ovadia points out, people are cured. They're not dealing with something, their diet type two diabetes more often that goes away without drugs, their coronary disease becomes quiescent or even regresses, their ulcerative colitis reverses. Over and over and over again, we are seeing people gain real control. Now, what's the healthcare system going to do if it can't dispense procedures and pharmaceuticals? So you can see that their resistance to all this? 

Jack Heald   

Absolutely. I'm just thinking about - you guys continue to give me more and more reasons to realize that my intuition as a 20 year old, that which was the authorities were full of shit. That I was right. And I've watched the medical system over my lifetime. What it is appeared to me has been happening from the outside, you guys are confirming is exactly what is happening. You people on the inside are... And what it looked like to me was a system designed to keep people enslaved. I don't know if that's a too strong a word. But I've started, I've started saying that patients are not customers, to the insurance companies, their crops. And I don't think I'm overstating it. So I'm just had to vent a little there.  

William Davis, MD   

I call it willful ignorance. That is our colleagues focus on the things that are likely to generate revenue and tend to just ignore the things that don't lead to revenue generation. So if I can do put in three stents,  get paid many 1000s of dollars, or I can show somebody how to manage their vitamin D had to manage small LDL particles, address their microbiome, and watch their coronary disease become quiescent, it hardly pays anything and so there's not a big profit motive in dispensing health, but you know, that's what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to help people become healthy. And it's just you know, and that's what I'm so grateful for Dr. Ovadia, that he is a gym. There's, I can kind of two fingers, number of thoracic surgeons in this world who actually talk about health. 

Jack Heald   

Well, that'll bring I agree I have having, having Phil come into my life has been one of the highlights of my last year, I have learned so much. Some things I wish I didn't know. But I'm, I want to ask you about undoubtedly, your medical colleagues and researchers and scientists received this information with great joy and have heaped accolades on you. Undoubtedly, you've been nominated for several worldwide prizes. Tell us about that. 

William Davis, MD   

The truth Jack, I'm sure Phil will tell you the same is most of our colleagues don't give a shit. They don't pay attention to this stuff. They don't read books, they don't present participate in conversations. Doesn't sound terribly cynical. But I was guilty of it too. When I was in the cath lab, and a good looking blonde and miniskirt comes in and tells me, Doc, you want to go on an all-expense paid trip to Orlando for all our key decision making? Oh, yes, I do. Or how this how the world works. And that's where a lot of the education comes from. It's not from reading the science, it's not for participating in debate. And there's this process of willful ignorance. So there's very little awareness, or there's outright dismissal. They'll say things like, well, that's not consistent with the guidelines, the dietary guidelines, and they accept dietary guidelines at face value as dispensed by the dietitians. And so there's not a whole, so I expected a ton of pushback, there's not a lot of pushback, because they simply don't care. 

Jack Heald   

Oh, my Lord, it's not even pushed back. It's just they simply ignore you. 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

Yeah, I mean, you know, we, 

Jack Heald   

I can't believe I still have the capacity to be surprised with all the stuff you've dumped on me in the last year. But I'm still just. 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

Yeah, certainly, we would hope that, you know, Dr. Davis, would be invited to talk to the American Heart Association, you know, meeting every year, you know, the leading, or, you know, the meeting where the most cardiologist show up, I hesitate to call it the leading meeting, but, you know, and he's right, that concepts like this are just not, you know, are just not invited or not welcome. So, you know, along those lines, the challenge becomes, you know, getting this information directly to the people. And really, you know, I think, ultimately, that's the way that we are going to have an influence. And, you know, of course, you've been fighting that battle now for, you know, well over a decade, close to two decades. Talk, talk a little bit about your experience with that, and getting the message out, you know, when you write these books, and you, you know, have this platform, what are some of the challenges that you've come up against, trying to get this information in the hands of the people who would benefit from it? 

William Davis, MD   

Well, one of the things that happened, that I noticed with my Undoctored book in 2015, was, I'd been on, I don't personally care to be on big media, but you got to do it to spread the message. So I was on Dr. Oz, four times, CBS This Morning, a number of times at a PBS show. And other words made I made the rounds of all major media. But I wrote the book Undoctored and found all doors slam shut. And I was no longer welcome on any media. And by the way, that's so it's so important for what you guys are doing right here, broadcasting the message. So I thought it was me, it turns out to be virtually all people who have a message of health or nutrition. So major media has essentially blacklisted anybody wants to talk about health. You know, it used wasn't that long ago, you could turn on Morning News, and they'd have an author on a health or nutrition topic and they talk about it. Watch Morning News now you'll see there is zero conversation about nutrition and health unless it involves conventional health care. And of course, it's never critical with conventional health care, even though modern healthcare is a trillion dollar disaster, that is bankrupting people left and right, even people with insurance. But there's no conversation about this at all, because it's contrary to the interests of the advertisers, Big Pharma spending about $6 billion a year in advertising. And so now if Dr. Ovadia or I want to go on major media and talk about a book a topic, an event, then Not Allowed we they will not bring us on anymore. So, you know, ironically, the legislation to allow direct consumer drug advertising was based on the idea that corporations have the right to free speech just as individuals do. But the ironic thing is that now they have squashed free speech and everyday people cannot hear or not allowed to hear health messages through major media. This, by the way, is print also. 

Jack Heald   

Print also? 

William Davis, MD   

Major print media, magazines, newspapers. 

Jack Heald   

Okay. All right. Well, I wish I could say I'm surprised but I'm not I will say this. In response to that. Joe Rogan has more listeners in a week than ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN news shows combined, completely outside the mainstream media, completely free of any kind of gatekeepers whatsoever. So folks like you and I, who grew up with three or four major broadcast channels that disseminated all the news and a half a dozen newspapers that were the papers of record. It's still easy to be in that mindset that those are the ones that matter. But the reality is those things that used to matter, those media outlets that used to matter, simply don't matter anymore. And the last two years have proven irrefutably that not only are they not matter, but they are they are actively operating as instruments of oppression. And here we have this. Dr. Ovadia is podcast has gone from zero we started in what was a September, Phil, we started 10 months, nine months ago. He's already one of the top 10% of podcasters in the world. And obviously there's a tremendous hunger for that kind, for this kind of information. So as aggravating, irritating and nauseating, as the reaction of the mainstream media is to this kind of information. The good news is, we're not dependent on them anymore. We route them. This information is getting out. I mean, good lord, I look at the growth statistics on this podcast, we have to reach out I'm just like, I personally have never been involved with anything that does what this is doing. We're meeting a need. All right, so enough about that. I'd like to I'd like you to go a little bit deeper now with the Wheat Belly and the microbiome. What's it, Super Gut? Go a little deeper there with that. I know with Wheat Belly. If we were going to boil the book down to one, one phrase or one word, it would be stop eating wheat. I realize there's a lot more to it than that but talk about Super Gut and help us put the put the pieces together. 

William Davis, MD   

So two basic principles. One is that overgrowth issue the SIBO, as well as dysbiosis, disrupted bowel flora, it confined to the colon. These are response for a huge number of health problems. But the other part of this is the loss of healthy microbes. And we can replace a lot of them.  

Jack Heald   

Yes, the thing I was wondering about. 

William Davis, MD   

So my favorite is Lactobacillus reuteri. R E U T E R I named after the German microbiologist who discovered it in human breast milk in 1962. Well, back then he was easy to recover this microbe. As his 40 year career unfolded, he found it harder and harder and harder to find people with this microbe. More recent surveys show that almost nobody has it anymore. So this is microbe rent when restored does some spectacular things. So it it's unique in that it colonizes the entire GI tract, small bowel as well as colon, where it sends a signal via the vagus nerve to the brain to release the hormone oxytocin. So your listeners might remember what oxytocin is the hormone of love and empathy. And so when you restore this microbe, people say, I like other people better. I like my coworkers better. They're less annoying to me. My favorite is I understand other people's points of view better. Oh, now ladies love it. Because the boost of oxytocin causes an explosion of dermal collagen, and they start to lose their wrinkles. Oh guys love it because you get a restoration of youthful muscle and strength, you get deeper sleep. I'm gonna chronic insomniac. Now I now sleep nine hours straight through vivid dreams, your libido goes up, you have greater erotic content of your dreams, the ladies have... 

Jack Heald   

Stop right there!  

Jack Heald   

Guys! Want to have sexy dreams? Get your gut taken care of.  

Jack Heald   

I love it. There's got to be a product there. 

William Davis, MD   

But the ladies, they ladies tell me they say we don't care about the empathy. We don't care about the muscle or bone density or sleep, we just want less wrinkles. So that's what's driving. 

Jack Heald   

Is there that is there. Is there an ethnic variation in this? Are some ethnicities more or less prone to having or not having this this microorganism in our guts? 

William Davis, MD   

Probably not. There's not been any exploration of that question. But so one of the things to keep in mind is that reuteri this microbe is unusually sensitive to common antibiotics, like amoxicillin or ampicillin. So if you took amoxicillin for a sinus infection at age 35, you probably lost all your reuteri and other microbes. And so you've lost that ability to boost oxytocin. So spectacular things happen when now what we do. So this this all happened several years ago, and the microbiome wanted comes from a company in Sweden called Bio Gaia, and they sell it to is a product called Gastrous.  

William Davis, MD   

Well, that's a tablet intended for infants, because this microbe given to infants, reduces colic reduces regurgitation of breast milk or formula. In other words, modest benefits. But the tablets had so few bacteria in them because they're made for babies. Then I got the tablets, I crushed them and made yogurt out of them. Not yogurt in the conventional sense. It's really just, it's a way to increase bacterial counts. So we use extended fermentation. So in commercial fermentation of yogurt, they ferment for four hours, you know, microbes don't have sexual reproduction. There's no mommy and daddy microbes, they just double asexual reproduction. One becomes two, two becomes four.  

William Davis, MD   

Well, Reuteri doubles every three hours. Commercial yogurt making is a four hour process. So if we did like they do in a factory, you'd have nothing. So we ferment for 36 hours, we did perform flow cyclometry studies on the yogurts, and it looks like 36 hours is the magic number. Beyond 36 hours, you get degradation in numbers because of competition for nutrients. So 36 hours, we get about 250 billion counts of bacteria per half cup serving. So by making the yogurt with extended fermentation, starting with reuteri, I regret calling it yogurt, not yogurt, but it looks and tastes like yogurt. But we increased microbial count from the start by 1000 fold. And that's probably part of the reason we get these big, big effects. Now that's one microbe. There's plenty others you can get, and have other effects, like shrink your waist, or reduce arthritis pain, or reduce Restless Leg Syndrome. Or there's a whole long list of effects, better competitive, better competition as an athlete, less muscle breakdown. So there's, it's like a menu, I tell people it's like going to a restaurant. And the waitress gives you a menu you don't freak out. Because you can't order every appetizer and main dish and dessert, you pick and choose the dishes you want. Same thing here, you can pick and choose the effect you want. And then microbe you want. And then we ferment it to high numbers doesn't have to be dairy by the way can be other things too. And you get these really high counts. And you can get things like smoother skin, less muscle breakdown, lower or less arthritis pain, smaller waist. Reduce anxiety. 

William Davis, MD   

So it's as simple as just simply taking this orally, simply adjusting it, eating it.  

William Davis, MD   

Exactly. Yeah, by the way. So this SIBO process. That's the other issue that there's 30 feet of microbes, sending endotoxin into your bloodstream, raising blood sugar, raising blood pressure causing depression, all those other effects outside the GI tract. the conventional answer. As Phil will tell you the conventional answer is usually ignore it or be ignorant of it. But the few gastroenterologist who do pay attention can prescribe an antibiotic called Rifaximin which has a very poor track record. It's not very good. It's not very effective. The efficacy may be as low as 25%, at best maybe 60% with no advice Of course, typically, on how you got it, you got this SIBO issue, what you can do to increase efficacy and what you can do to prevent recurrences?  

William Davis, MD   

Well, I asked a different set of questions I asked, Well, gee, if you have SIBO, and you took a commercial probiotic, will the SIBO go away? No. It might, you might get less bloating or diarrhea, but you'll still have SIBO. So I asked, What if we chose microbes that colonize the upper GI tract that's where SIBO is and what if we chose microbes that produce what are called bacteria, since these are natural antibiotics, effective against the species of SIBO. So I chose three, our friend Lactobacillus reuteri, I chose a strain of Lactobacillus gasseri, the BNR 17 strain, because he composes up to seven bacteria sins and likewise colonize the upper GI tract, I chose a strain of bacillus coagulants. We co-fermented these three prolonged fermentation for bigger bacterial counts, and cross my fingers is pleasant experience. About 30 People have done this 90% have converted to negative. We also have this device. This is the AIRE device, A I R E, that measures hydrogen gas, it's a mapping device that tells you where microbes live in your GI tract. So you want to know if they're way up high as occurs in SIBO. Or whether way down low in the colon, this will tell you it maps it out. Unfortunately, the guy measures hydrogen gas and the breath bacteria 

Jack Heald   

Blow into it? 

William Davis, MD   

So you blow into it registers on your smartphone zero to 10. Now the odd twist and all this is that the inventor, Dr. Angus Short, a young engineer from Dublin, Ireland, who invented this for his fiancée, now wife who had irritable bowel syndrome, and was told to go on a low FODMAP diet, low fiber low sugar diet to reduce bloating and diarrhea. When he saw how tough it was for her and how she'd slip up and have gas and diarrhea, so he invents this device thinking is a device that check for incomplete fermentation. Well, he releases in 2018, I call him up, I say, Angus, that's not what this is what you invented, that's not what it is. It's a mapping device to tell you where microbes live. But now they're changing entire course of the company because of this. But I tell you this, because if you order it from the current ones black by the way, this is the old one, my new ones in the kitchen. The instructions that come with it are wrong. They'll tell you how to use it for IBS with FODMAPs. So I have seven pages in my Super Gut, it's not that tough, sounds like a lot. But there's seven pages on how to use it to use as a mapping device. 

Jack Heald   

What's it called? 

William Davis, MD   

AIRE. And the company is called FoodMarble. And by the way, we will perform a formal clinical trial to see if that when I call SIBO yogurt, the three microbes, we won't get this yogurt, though we'll have to encapsulate it. Just because in a clinical trial, you can't get people you could but it's imprecise. So we'll probably encapsulate and do it as a probiotic. But I think we have stumbled out a way to eradicate SIBO using a form of yogurt. 

Jack Heald   

So just to make sure I understand the mechanism you looked at a set of symptoms, you said "what naturally occurring bacteria counteract those symptoms in those locations in the body through one mechanism or another" and then put together this formula that does that. 

William Davis, MD   

Yeah, now we consume it for four weeks. You know, there's a lot of things here to explore,  how long do you need to eat it, et cetera. This is very preliminary. So I warn people, this is based on 30 people so far. And we have a device now a consumer device that allows us to determine whether or not the one peculiar, peculiar twist and all this is that because reuteri colonize the upper GI tract, which we want and produces hydrogen gas, it gives you a false positive is really a true positive. But for all practical purposes, it's a false positive. So what you have to do is your testing 10s or other high numbers to start eating yogurt for four weeks. Don't eat the yogurt for two weeks, then retest and you can see because reuteri will not take up long term residence in the GI tract. 

Jack Heald   

If they aren't taking up long term residents, how do you keep them in your GI tract? 

William Davis, MD   

You ask a fundamental question Jack, that's not been answered by anybody. But it's like so if mom gave you this microbe you'd like to have it for years, if not a lifetime if you didn't get exposed to such things as antibiotics, but if you take it as a probiotic, or as a yogurt, it only takes up residence for a few days or weeks. Why would that be? It's probably because microbes just like humans, you know, we don't live alone, right? We live with families, neighbors, friends, colleagues, coworkers, we live in communities, bacteria are the same. They live in communities, or guilds or consortia. So it's likely in future we won't say get reuteri, I will say get rotor, right, and the seven other species with which it collaborates. There's only one product by the way on the market in which that phenomenon has been incorporated. And it's the Biotiquest Sugar Shift product that my microbiologist friend, Dr. Raul Kano invented, he found this group of microbes. It does include reuteri, right? By the way, that collaborate in this case, and in consuming sugars in the GI tract, consume sucrose, fructose, glucose, and convert it to mannitol.  

Jack Heald   

Mannitol? And it's a sugar that is indigestible, so we just sit excreted. It doesn't, we don't metabolize it. 

William Davis, MD   

But because this group of microbes, this collaborative guild, of microbes in this sugar shift, consume sugars in the GI tract reduces your blood sugar, so we put people on that product, non-diabetics, and it reduced their fasting glucose by 9.8 milligrams per deciliter, which is quite substantial. Now, the reason I tell you about the mannitol is the founder of that company, Martha Carlin is really interested in finding a better means of dealing with Parkinson's disease because her husband developed Parkinson's disease at age 44. And the real reason, even though it reduces blood sugar - it's called Sugar Shift - the real reason they made this combination of microbes is in experimental models, mannitol crosses the brain into the brain, and breaks down the Alpha synuclein. That's the protein that accumulates in the brains of people with Parkinson's disease. Now, they have not yet conducted their clinical trial, but anecdotally, they give it to a bunch of people with Parkinson's, and they've seen partial remission occur. 

Jack Heald   

Now, I want to ask a couple of things because we got people who are listening as well as watching. If you're a listener, the little AIRE device that Dr. Davis held up is about the size of a matchbook, or one of the there was an iPad years ago, that was an iPod years ago, that was a little square, maybe an inch and a half or two inches square. That's thing one. Thing two is... Good Lord, I've got so busy describing the device, I forgot the other thing I was gonna say. 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

All right, I'll, I'll jump in there on that note, and just, you know, I find it so interesting that here we are, you know, to, you know, to physicians who started in, you know, with heart diseases, our focus, and we started looking for ways to better, you know, prevent and treat heart disease. And, you know, we stumble across these concepts that, you know, we're originally described for things like epilepsy, and you know, obesity and diabetes, and we find them benefiting health, and then, you know, we start talking about conditions like Parkinson’s, and, and, you know, mental health. I was at the metabolic health summit a few weeks ago, and, you know, just hearing the, the, the wide variety of medical conditions, and yet the answer ends up being the same, pretty much. And, you know, it all just comes down to these basic concepts about the foods that we're eating, and how that, you know, affects health. And, you know, whether or not you believe in, in creation, or evolution, or however, we got this way at humans, you know, it does just make sense that, you know, what's going to keep one particular part of our body healthy, is going to be the same thing that keeps you know, the other parts of our body healthy as well. So, it really, you know, I'd love to kind of hear your thoughts on how this all circles back and you know, how, you know, a cardiologist ends up, you know, looking at the microbiome and figuring out, you know, how that's going to benefit all of our health and you know, how we just keep circling around the same basic concepts of just eating real food and eliminating the junk and, and letting the body heal ourselves, that heal itself, which is a lot of what this comes down to, you know, when you just stop putting the toxins in and damaging the body, the body is going to be able to heal itself. And I just would love to hear your thoughts on all that. 

William Davis, MD   

You know, I think about the experience of indigenous population is like the Yanomami in Brazil, the matzah is in Peru, the Malawi in eastern Africa, the hodza. In Tanzania, the Maasai in Kenya, the Mori in New Zealand, the people in the jungles of New Guinea. These are people they do they have infection, of course, nematode infestation is they have injury, but they have no type two diabetes, ulcerative colitis, colon cancer, obesity, coronary disease. They have almost none - with very rare exceptions - none of the diseases that we have. Ironically, the anthropology community has, for years called them the diseases of civilization. So we've done a great job with infections and injury. And we were terrible at the diseases of civilization because the system is bent on long-term. You know, the, the dream of Big Pharma is not a course of antibiotics for two weeks. It's a drug you take for 30 years, like blood pressure drug or a diabetes drug. They want chronic health conditions. They salivate when they when you talk about chronic health conditions. That's the stuff they want. As Dr. Ovadia is pointing out, just with a handful of strategies, you can reverse the great majority of modern diseases of civilization. 

Jack Heald   

You know, our episode two weeks ago, we had Dr. Brian Lenzkes on. And he told the story of speaking to his HMO rep. about the great work that he was doing to help patients reverse their diabetes and complaining to the HMO that if he if they'd give him more time with each patient, he could save them more money by helping more patients get off insulin and the HMO rep told him point blank, "You don't save us money by doing that. you cost us money." I had to stop him and ask him to repeat because I wasn't sure I'd heard it right. And I'd heard it right. The HMO rep specifically said "the more codes, diagnostic codes you bring in on a patient, the more money we make."  

Jack Heald   

You know, one of my favorite books is a book called SystemAntics used to be called the system's Bible by an author named John gall. And it was written from the standpoint of somebody who, who, a programmer, somebody who creates information systems. But I've been trying to find a quote, as we've been sitting here, I can't find it. But the gist of it is, if you want to know the purpose of a system, look at the output. And the output of our medical system is not health. I don't think I need to say anymore. All right. Well, Bill, I feel like I could sit here and have this keep this conversation going for a long time. I'm interested in chemistry and microbiology. And I'd love to drill down into the depths. But I don't want to bore people out of their skulls. So let's do this. What's the best way for a listener unfamiliar with anything that, has never heard of Dr. William Davis, what's the best way for them to get started with learning about the things that you have learned to help people? Where do they start? 

William Davis, MD   

You know, I was mindful Jack that if they start with all the microbiome stuff, they missed all this stuff that preceded it: the dietary stuff, the nutrients that are lacking in modern life, etc. So I tried to pack it all into the Super Gut program, it does incorporate all these things. Now, some people do find it kind of complicated. So if somebody wanted just an introduction to the diet, I still conduct you know, I have an old book called Wheat Belly 10 Day brain detox, we have a private Facebook page, people engage in it, and they still do it. It's a good way to get started with a lot of hand holding with cheat sheets and recipes, and lots of support. So there's, there's that book and the private Facebook page if you just if you go into my I have a new website called DrDavisInfiniteHealth.com And it's kind of this starting point for a lot of those kinds of things with links to all that stuff. But of course Super Gut if you want it in one place super good is has all the recipes. It's got how to replace your reuteri, Gasser AI, Bacillus coagulants, and a whole bunch of other microbes for specific effects as well as the SIBO yogurt recipe and other ideas. 

Jack Heald   

I'm fascinated with this idea of "go down your menu of What Effects Do You Want to Have" and pick your micro bacteria. 

William Davis, MD   

The list is growing very quickly. We're not that far away. Think from having a microbe or collection of microbes, for instance, that treats depression, for instance. 

Jack Heald   

Maybe there's a whole new field of medicine just waiting here of healing. 

William Davis, MD   

Yeah, we know what's exciting for me and Phil is, so many cardiac conditions are looking like the microbiome is playing a major role. Who would have thought that coronary disease can be largely driven by the microbiome? This is amazing. Atrial fibrillation, driven by the microbiome, Left Ventricular Systolic Dysfunction, congestive heart failure and cardiomyopathy, these may be diseases, not entirely, perhaps there's other factors, but a large degree are impacted by the microbiome and the endotoxemia that accompany dysbiosis. 

Jack Heald   

Well, it makes sense that if you're poisoning yourself from the inside, one of the best things to do to get healthy is stop poisoning yourself from the inside. "Doctor, it hurts when I hit myself in the head with a hammer." "Well, let's start by not hitting yourself in the head with a hammer." All right, well, we're gonna make sure all that stuff shows up on the show notes page. So all these links, I happen to know that you can actually follow Dr. William Davis on Twitter. I think that's Dr. William Davis, isn't it? 

William Davis, MD   

Yes, that's right. 

Jack Heald   

I'm sorry. @WilliamDavisMD. That's it - @WilliamDavisMD. You can follow him there on Twitter, which is of course my favorite place to hang out. Wow. Phil, it just keeps getting better and better, man. Yes. I'm loving this. I'll tell you Bill, I would love to have you back. Oh, you know, maybe six months from now. And just do a follow up new stuff. What we found out what you know, and I know there's you probably got story after story after story. We just flat ran out of time today. I want to hear stories, too. I went on one of your websites and just saw a handful of those amazing stories. I'm going to tell a very, very short one. My wife stumbled onto your book Wheat Belly six months ago. And it clicked for her. And she, by and large, has cut out the wheat and she talks about how instantly her joint aches went away. And when she ingests wheat now, she knows it. She's instantly aware that she's done it. She aches, she doesn't feel good. So I personally want to thank you because your book Wheat Belly has made my wife's and therefore my life better. 

William Davis, MD   

That's great, Jack. That's great.  

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

Yeah, it's been a pleasure. And certainly we'd love to have you back again. And I look forward to interacting more and continuing our conversation. Just a couple of crazy heart doctors out there trying to actually help people. 

Jack Heald   

How weird. 

William Davis, MD   

All right, I appreciate what all you're doing. 

Jack Heald   

This is so much fun. I just I feel like this is one of my favorite hours during the week. All right. Well for Dr. William Davis, author of Wheat Belly and Super Gut for our host Dr. Philip Ovadia. I'm Jack Heald. This is the Stay Off My Operating Table podcast. Follow Dr. Ovadia on Twitter @ifixhearts. Follow up guy hit his website ifixhearts.co and take a metabolic health test and connect with him directly at his website over at a heart health.com And we will talk to you guys next time.