64: Your Gut is Causing ALL of Your Symptoms - It's Not Just "In Your Head"

There's nothing quite as comforting as being gaslit by your doctor when they say that the symptoms all over your body are not connected to your gut. Of course they are - your doctor just doesn't understand it.

This episode is going to help you understand how and why the symptoms you're experiencing all over (skin, headaches, allergies, depression/anxiety, hormone issues, etc.) are NOT just in your head.

TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• The gut-full body connection
• How your gut causes symptoms everywhere
• The role of leaky gut and your gut microbiome
• How to heal your whole body by starting in your gut

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Transcript

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Between you and I, there's nothing quite like being gaslit by your doctor when you go in with a symptom, or symptoms, and they either tell you it's normal, or it's all in your head, or just anxiety, or aging, and even worse, when you came down with something like a gut issue, and then all these other symptoms started happening. And they say it's not connected, simply because they can't explain it. Well, we both know between you and I, that's a bunch of bullshit, which is why I'm going to be showing you how the I'm going to show you what's actually happening inside your body that's creating all these symptoms from these gut issues, and how they're all connected that way, and of course, how you can begin healing these full body symptoms, so you can start getting some relief and getting it quickly. Contrary to what your doctors told you, Crohn's and Colitis are reversible. Now, I've helped hundreds of people reverse their bowel disease, and I'm here to help you do it too, because inflammation always has a root cause. We just have to find it. This is the Reversing Crohn's and Colitis Naturally podcast. Now, I do these live trainings in my Facebook group every single week, and put the audios here for you to listen to. If you want to watch the video versions of these episodes, just click the link in the show notes to get access to our Facebook group and YouTube channel. And for weekly updates, information, tips, and tricks, you can sign up for our email list by clicking the link in the show notes below. Now, if you're new here, my name is Josh Dech. I'm a gut specialist and physician's consultant for complex cases of Crohn's, Colitis, and IBS. I do these videos every single week so you can learn how to heal your gut naturally. Because contrary to popular belief, they're not just genetic conditions, and you can heal your gut from everything, always. It just takes time, tools, and the know-how. First things first, I want to talk about your gut. Your gut is the center of your body, not just anatomically, but it's quite literally the center of your body. In fact, when you are in utero, your mother's womb, there's something here, it's called the primitive disc. It's almost this, a little more overly than that. Anyway, it looks like a steak, and it's this nervous system tissue, it's neurological. And after about the 15th, 17th day in utero, it lengthens and it divides. And so, this will become your brain, and this becomes your gut. You develop about a hundred billion neurons inside of your brain, and you develop about 500 million neurons inside of your gut from that one little piece of tissue. It's pretty amazing. Now, from that time forward, your gut and your brain are talking non-stop, through chemicals and nervous system signals and all kinds of stuff. In fact, your gut is called the second brain, not only because they're connected from the same tissue from birth, but also the neurons it thinks. 80% of the signals shared between your gut and your brain don't start in your brain. 80% of the signals actually come from your gut, and it goes to your brain. That means your gut is its own computer, its own system, its own brain, communicating to the brain in your head. So it's really amazing structures that are working all the time. Now, about that brain of yours with those hundred billion neurons, it works with something called neurotransmitters, the little chemicals that just help send signals and bridge them across the gap from neuron to neuron. You know that about 90% of those are made inside of your gut. Your brain does not work properly without your gut. It is the second brain. Not only is 90% of your neurotransmitters made there, but 70% of your immune cells for your entire immune system come from your gut. Your lymphatic system, which is a major player in your immune system, it's attached to your gut. There's actually something called the gout, and the gout we'll talk about here, these gut-associated and mucoid-associated lymphoid tissues. Lymphoid being lymphatic, it's all there. Now, your gut contains about a hundred trillion microbes. Put that in perspective, that would be like if you took a penny, and you lined them up, touching each other, it went all the way around the world about 54 times. That's how many microbes you got inside of your gut. They do everything for you. In fact, they make up 2% to 3% of your body weight. You have approximately, there are arguments on how many microbes we're counting, but you have approximately a hundred trillion microbes in your gut. That means you also have approximately 10 trillion cells in your body, your entire human body, meaning your gut microbes outnumber you up to 10 to 1. Arguments are 2 to 1, 10 to 1, but it's a lot either way, right? Final cherry on top of this one for you, how amazing the gut is, and why this is so important, why everything's connected to your gut. Bring these to your doctor and tell him, like, ah, you're wrong, here's why. Your entire human genome, right? This is everything that makes you, you as an individual, right? You have anywhere from 23 to 25,000 genes in the human genome. Did you know that your microbiome, the gut bacteria, all hundred trillion combined have about 3 million different genes inside of them? There's something like 130 times more genetic material inside of your gut alone than the rest of your body that makes you, you as a human being. So when your doctor says, ah, well, you have this gut symptom came up, or this disease, this condition came up, but everything else, your joint pain, your anxiety, your brain fog, your skin issues, it's not connected bullshit. These are some simple facts to help you make the correlation as to why. I'm going to show you exactly why. So let's get into this together. Your gut, I want you to think of it kind of like a donut, right? It's just one big tube. Really, if you think about it, right? You have your mouth, and it's basically a slip and slide down your esophagus to the stomach, and it goes through this slippery tube, your intestines, until it comes out as poop. If it didn't have doors in it, it would just be one straight shot like a slip and slide. And so, it really is one giant, almost like a donut, just really long tube-like donut. But here's the thing, when this food is processing through, when things you put into your mouth are processing through your gut and your intestines, they end up in your body, right? That's obviously you eat, you break down, you digest and absorb. And food that ends up in your intestine going through this process, right? Coming... Actually, it's gonna be this way. You think I know that. Anyway, so it comes this way down the intestine. As it's processing all this food that's floating around up here, it actually goes and gets absorbed through all these little tiny cells. So, inside your small intestine, it's all these little finger-like things, and all these little finger-like projectiles, or whatever you want to call them. I don't know what the word I'm gonna look for is, projectiles, and they don't shoot themselves up. Anyway, you get the idea. So, we have all these little finger-like things, and then you have all these little cells on top of these micro fingers, like itty-bitty tiny things. And they're all these individual cells. It's one layer. Now, across that one single layer, once you take... I mean, this is a zooming, okay? Let's blast this out. This is the inside of your intestine. All this food is processing inside your intestine, and it crosses this barrier, one cell thick. That's it. One cell. Directly on the other side of that, you have your lymphatic tissue. That's the green stuff here, and the red stuff is your bloodstream. This means everything you eat that goes through this tube, this slip-and-slide inside of your body, goes directly through one cell. It's like 150th the thickness of a strand of hair. That's the only barrier between poop and your blood in your immune system. It crosses through, and your body absorbs it. It's a really amazing system, but here's the problem. This pathway here, this process... Think of it like a cheesecloth, right? You have this cheesecloth, and you have all these itty-bitty tiny holes in it. Very, very, very, very small. What happens when you press cheese through a cheesecloth? Only water is supposed to get out, but if that cheesecloth tears, chunks pass through. The same thing when we're dealing with your intestines, your small intestines, those little finger-like things. What happens when you have what's called leaky gut? Some people's doctors say, wow, leaky gut doesn't exist. Intestinal permeability. Same shit, just a different word. What happens, these cells spread apart. So instead of going through proper border security, like at the airport or something, you just pass through all willy-nilly. Big chunks get through the cheesecloth. You have microbes and toxins and all kinds of stuff that can pass through where they should not be. But here's what's really interesting. That's the process of how things get through. They break down to tiny particles. It's supposed to break down itty-bitty, microscopic little molecules to pass through these individual cells, right, where you can say, yep, you're safe. Come on through, right? TSA searches your bags. You're good. You're safe. Go on through. You're a bad guy. Boom, you're arrested. Get out. Your intestines will do that and give you diarrhea. Push something out, right? We don't want certain things absorbing. But here's the problem. We know those who say Crohn's colitis, so bowel diseases, have 25 to 30% of those people have a SIBO condition. This is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. When you have SIBO, your body is overproducing toxins. Now that number, 25 to 37% of Crohn's colitis having SIBO is on a larger study, but smaller studies suggest up to 62%. Here's the problem. When you have all this overgrowth inside of your intestines, all these microbes produce excessive toxins. And all these byproducts of things like fermentation, they produce toxins like hydrogen, hydrogen sulfide, and methane, which are toxic gases. They can be really smelly, cause abdominal pain, neuropathic pains. They can even cause mitochondrial toxicity. So the cells in your body that make you you, that provide your energy, that help with detoxification and keeping you healthy, those become dysfunctional or toxified. So everything in your body starts to break down. So here's what happens in SIBO. Largely, it's when you have fecal microbes. So stuff that should be in your large intestine on its way out, actually makes its way backwards into the small intestine. Now, remember we said the small intestine, it's only one cell thick, itty bitty things. Your large intestine actually has a double wall. It's got a thicker mucous membrane layer, and it's got a double cell wall. So less things get through. Fermentation should happen in your large intestine. But when you have a disruption, or you have overgrowth, or fecal microbes flowing backward into the small intestine, or overgrowth of bacteria for another reason in your small intestine, you get fermentation in the single layer with a weaker mucous membrane. Guess what happens? You start developing symptoms. So we get production of things like D-lactic acid. Now, this one can happen from overgrowth of bacteria, like your lactobacillus strains. It produces this D-lactic acid. Don't worry about that one, but here's the thing. This byproduct produces symptoms, brain fog, dizziness, ataxia. That's like poor muscle control, like can't get your footing, you're tripping a lot, or you feel clumsy. It can cause these symptoms. It can cause fatigue. Or if you have what's called protein putrefaction. Protein putrefaction is when you're not digesting your proteins, either due to high stress and poor digestion, due to motility issues, whatever condition starting from your gut. And so this protein putrefaction produces ammonia, or it's called biogenic amines. These are byproducts like histamine, tyramine, putrescine, and even something called cadaverine, like cadaver, right? So all these are very toxic byproducts, which cause a ton of symptoms. We can also have bacteria that are hyperfermenting and producing excess byproducts. You can get these byproducts of bacterial metabolism. So as your bacteria are doing things, they're metabolizing and breaking down digesting proteins, they can create really bad breath, brain fog, fatigue, for example. And again, those amines like histamines, you're talking about things like flushing, rashes, hives, anxiety, palpitations. You can even find yourself getting all kinds of other symptoms like allergies, asthma, drippy runny sinuses, all kinds of nasty business. Or tyramines or another amine that's produced can create migraines or periods of hypertension or high blood pressure. So here's what we've covered so far. We talked about your gut, how it's like your second body, second brain, second everything is connected. It's one tube. You have one cell that things pass through directly to your blood and lymphatic system, which goes all around your body. It's a superhighway. These toxins are produced, they make byproducts. Where do you think they're going? They're not going straight out. They're absorbing through this permeable cheesecloth layer getting into your gut or past the gut barrier, into your blood, into your lymphs. They're circulating. Your doctor goes, it's not connected. Let's talk anatomy 101. They're teaching this stuff in some high school classes now. They're just out of date. I get this a lot. Well, how can you figure this out if my doctor doesn't know? They should know everything. No, they don't. I've had some GI doctors, gastroenterology specialists who say the microbiome is just a myth. And people add that. I had literally someone said word for word on Instagram that is objectively untrue. That would mean the average Joe knows more than your doctor. Isn't that terrifying? Put that in perspective. So, there's cheesecloth tears. Toxins get through. They circulate around your body producing symptoms. There's other compounds that can be produced causing things like liver stress, cognitive dullness, systemic inflammation, joint pain or arthritis, depression, hyperactive immune responses. So, suddenly you've got more allergies, you're more irritable. All kinds of symptoms can happen coming from your gut and the toxins produced. Now, there are other symptoms of things like dysbiosis because that's really what we're talking about now. Dysbiosis is a big broad term that we use to cover, I would say generally just a state of imbalance, right? That's what it is. Whether it covers SIBO or SIFO or IMO or whatever bacterial microbial condition you're talking about, even an acute infection could be considered dysbiosis, a state of imbalance. But for our argument today, we're saying dysbiosis is your body's normal. It's stuck in this state. It's not like food poisoning, diarrhea for a day or two, you're done. That's technically dysbiosis, but your body fixes it. Dysbiosis, what we're talking about is an imbalance of microbes, imbalance of bacteria in your body it's unable to correct. That is going to be dysbiosis for our purposes. And so, what we're talking about now is other symptoms like these immune signaling issues where your body can't regulate inflammation properly. It's hyperactive or hyperreactive. You're dealing with nutrient deficiencies. Nutrient deficiencies are the building block for your entire body. Vitamins, minerals, amino acids, fats, fatty acids, short chain fatty acids. These come from your gut and from your foods. But if you're not breaking down, digesting, absorbing, every cell in your body begins to become deficient and falls apart. Your doctor says, oh, they're not connected. I came down with a gut issue. Now, suddenly I've got anxiety. I've got joint pain. I've got hair loss. I've got hormonal issues. You're not menstruating anymore. You've got erectile dysfunction. You're anxious. You're not sleeping. It's all from your gut. Of course, they're connected. You can develop metabolic and hormonal imbalances. You get toxic recirculation. As you have what's called enterohepatic recirculation. My marker's drying out. I left it too long. This is a big fancy word, but here's what it is. You have your liver. You have your gallbladder. Your liver produces this bile, right? Bile goes into the gallbladder and it injects it into the small intestine. That goes through the small intestine and right at the end, before it connects to your large intestine, it gets reabsorbed. This is called enterohepatic. Entero meaning gut, hepatic liver recirculation. It's production, ejection, reabsorption. But bile holds onto toxins. If your gut is dysfunctional, if your body is toxified, you're not able to clean that bile. You recirculate 95% of it because it's expensive to make for your body. So, you recirculate it all. Well, if you're recirculating it and toxins are bound to it, what are you doing? You're recirculating and reabsorbing more toxins. This is how we get sick all over your body, simply from your gut. But your doctor says it's not connected. This is either gaslighting or ignorance or both. So, here's what we can do about it. Because when your body is sick, when your body is toxic, we have to get you help. If you just leave them to recirculate, oh, I'm inflamed. I've got joint pain. I'll take an anti-inflammatory. What good does that do you? Because you're dealing with an anti-inflammatory for joint pain that has a root cause. All you're doing on the back end is stopping the pain from happening, but not addressing the reason why you're toxic or inflamed in the first place. I digress. That's a lot. It's like drinking from a firehose. But here's the thing. When your doctor says these symptoms are not connected to your gut, show them this video. Take a couple of notes. Be like, dude, you're wrong. Now, here's the thing. I might pick on doctors a lot or sound like I'm picking on doctors a lot. It's a different toolkit. It's a different tool chest. A lot of them, they're just not taught this stuff. But you can be, which means you can equip yourself with it. Frankly, a lot of doctors want to help. They just don't have the time to help you. They're not able. They're stuck in this insurance model. They got to get you in, get you out. They get 7 to 15 minutes per year per patient. Give the drugs, get you out. Quickest way to get your help, get your symptoms down, give you the drugs to mask it, not get the root cause. So, we have to go through that root cause. And here's how we're going to do it. I'm going to use my green marker because I think my black one is too dry now. Here's what we're going to look at. I'm not going to go into great detail on this immediate thing, okay? We're going through my D5R. I've done dozens of conversations on D and 5R. I'm going to brief you on it quickly, okay? D5R, this stands for drainage and the 5Rs. The 5Rs are a very simple process. You remove the toxin. You replenish the nutrients you're deficient on or whatever it is you're lacking. You repair, rebuild, and rejuvenate the gut microbiome, immune system, etc. I can get into that one in details over and over and over. But the idea is we're sick for three reasons, okay? Toxins, microbes, and deficiencies. You want to remove the toxin or the microbe. You want to fix the deficiency and replenish what your body is missing, rebalance the microbiome, etc. What we're talking about right now is the D, drainage. We're talking about the D. Go into drainage. Here's what we got to do. Drainage is the process of getting things out of your body. It's the exit doors. You can argue there's 9, 10 different exit doors. I'm talking about 7 right now. The first that we just talked about, right? Your liver and your gallbladder. That's where we're getting a lot of recirculation. Of course, you have your lymphatic system. You have your bowels. You have your kidneys. And you have your sinuses. These are going to be your major pathways. So liver, gallbladder, and bile ducts. Lymphatics, bowels, kidneys, sinuses. And your seventh is going to be skin. Now, one could argue, of course, lungs because you breathe out off gas, on a cellular level. And even your blood-brain barrier or your brain, like neurological, which would give you, you know, 10 different detox pathways. We're talking about these ones. Primarily right now, we're going to talk about your liver, gallbladder, and lymphs. If you're having regular bowel movements, you're good. You're hydrating. You're going to pee a lot. You're good. You're breathing through your nose instead of your mouth. Your sinuses may be clear. If you're actively moving and sweating, your skin will be protected. Actively moving and sweating will take care of your lymphatics. So let's do something supplementary. Let's talk about how to support your liver, gallbladder, bile ducts, right? First things first, there's some great supplementation you can utilize that I utilize with almost every client. Now, I want to preface. This is not medical advice. I'm not saying you should do this. I'm saying get help first. You can hurt yourself. I hope you don't. But I want you to have the information to equip yourself. First things first, there's a supplement called Tadka. Quality matters. It would cost you less than $30 to $50 a bottle. You're getting garbage, which means you need garbage results. So get the good stuff. Cell core, body bio, et cetera. I have a puppy who is quite feisty and saw somebody out the window. So if you're hearing some screaming, that's just her being a little chaos goblin. And so Tadka, great supplement. Very, very easy. I do want you, of course, to support your lymphatics, your skin, et cetera. I'll put that one back in here. With sweating and exercise, these are very important. Your lymphatic system is much like your blood. Your blood supply, your circulation. Because you have, in your lymphatic system, you have these little valves. Just like your blood. In these blood vessels, you have a heart that pumps these valves open. And then it goes lub and dub. Lub, dub. That's your heartbeat. It pushes and pulls. The valves open and close. Your lymphatic system has valves with no pump. So your physical movement is the muscles that contract and push that pump open. So you have to move through your immune system. So we've covered that. So let's talk about the things we can't do by just eating well and exercising. We often need some additional support in these dire straits. Tadka, great one. We want to talk about bitters. Digestive bitters. Dandelion, burdock, artichoke, ginger, gentian. There's different roots and herbs. You can use these bitter complexes. Try to get them. Organic Olivia, St. Francis have some bitter blends that have no laxatives in them. Because some will to get you moving. But digestive bitters promote motility, which gets things moving through the bowel, which is nice. Something else you want to use. We talked about bile from the liver gallbladder. Toxifying itself because it's full of toxins and can't clean. So we can use what's called bile acid sequestering or capturing of that bile. So you reabsorb less toxins. You capture toxins from it. Whether you believe in plant-based or carnivore diet or whatever you want. Doesn't matter. Fiber helps. If it doesn't agree with your gut, don't use it. But fiber can capture a lot of those toxins and help get them out of your body. We're draining. We're moving. We're getting them out so your system feels better. Any liver support supplement, NAC, milk thistle, whatever you may be using, is all going to be beneficial at the end of the day for getting things captured and getting them out. Second to that one. I always recommend these seldom, I'll say. I recommend them very prescriptively. Not for everyone, but probiotics can be helpful. Certain probiotics, Saccharomyces boulardii, your lactose, your bifidose. These ones largely can capture toxins. The postbiotics they've already made can help create better signaling for your immune system. They can get toxins out of your system. They can help crowd out some of the bad guys so good guys come back. If you buffer your gut and gut lining with things like tributarin. This one's nice. It's actually a company called Healthy Gut. They have a supplement called Tributarin X. And that's Steven Wright. Dude's brilliant. Had him on the podcast recently. Yet to publish the episode. With this company Healthy Gut. Big shout out to them. They have this Tributarin X. It's super potent. About three times more potent than your typical butyrates or sodium butyrates. It's bound with a redox oil for all the benefits. So it's a really cool supplement. You can get there as well. We want to replace the bad with the good. Okay. And the third thing I'm going to tell you right now. The most important thing. You supported your supplements. You got some things into your system. But I'm telling you. Do not hesitate to get help. I'm not talking like the Thor and Loki get help for like throws them. But what I'm talking about is getting help from a practitioner. Somebody you know, like, and trust. Who you think can get you through this. Here's why. I can't tell you the amount of times people come to see me. It's been a decade. 15, 20 years of just winging it. Buying supplements. Trying stuff. And not getting the help they need. Why wait? You're going to spend thousands and thousands. Tens of thousands of dollars. Get random lab testing. Try these supplements. You're throwing money. Throwing good money after bad. I'm not saying find me. Yes, I can help you. But somebody else can too. I'm a little weird. You might not like me. And that's okay. But get help from me. Get help from somebody else. Because your gut and the complexities behind it. These supplements are not a fix. These supplements are a temporary support to clear the toxins your body has in excess of production or is holding on to. But it's not fixing the reason you're producing them or holding them. It's just going to help you clear them. So hopefully, it's kind of like putting water on the fire. Keeping the fire from growing too quickly. But it's going to grow and eventually you'll run out of water. Get help. So if you want to reach out to somebody, that's great. If you want to reach out to me and work with me and my team, here's how you can do it. We're going to have a chat. Just to say, hey, let's figure out where your gut issues are coming from. Your Crohn's. Your colitis. Your IBS. Whatever it is. We'll see how it's all connected. Where it all came from. Get you the help that you need and begin reversing this. Because it can be done. If your doctor's telling you it can't be, they're wrong. It's either ignorance or it's gaslighting. There's a lot of reasons why. I've seen a lot of hubris, unfortunately, in that field of medicine as well. A lot of doctors fancy themselves as gods. But they're not. You are in charge of your own health because no one's going to do it for you and no one will care more than you do. So send me a DM with the word solution and we're going to connect with you right away. Just see what it looks like to get some help. We'll evaluate your situation and say, hey, here's what you're doing. Here's what you're taking. Here's where it came from. Here's your history. I take people in the 50s and 60s. I go back to birth. Were you bottle fed? Were you breastfed? Were you C-sectioned? What was your diet like? What was the home growing up? Was there toxins in the home? Mold in the home? Anybody else got sick? We build an entire history. When was your first menstrual cycle? What did that look like? What happened? When did you take antibiotics? We build an entire history and a story to figure out what broke down and wear and tear until you got the diagnosis you have today. And that's how we get you the help that you need. Thank you so much for being here. One of my favorite things to hear as an IBD specialist is something along the lines of, I learned more from you in 15 minutes than from my doctor in 15 years. And if this for the first time is really starting to click and it's starting to make sense, you're going, wait a minute, this might be reversible. I think there's more that I can do. This condition came out of nowhere. It happened to me out of the blue. I was healthy for 10, 20, 30, 40 years and suddenly I wasn't. And you're telling me there's no cause. If you're understanding finally that there is a cause, that something is driving this, I want to invite you to check the link in the show notes below. Send me an email. Ask a question. See if a program is a right fit for you. Because I promise you this doesn't have to be a lifelong sentence. You're not doomed to this. And IBD can be reversed.