Following Your Gut Podcast #8, Beyond the Bottle, Using Supplements with Purpose

In this episode of the “Following Your Gut” podcast, Roland Pankewich explores the foundation and application of the US Enzymes Master supplements philosophy. Designed to guide both practitioners and health-conscious individuals, the philosophy embraces a systems-thinking approach to health, focusing on digestive health as the cornerstone of overall well-being. Roland articulates how this framework can simplify the complexities of self-diagnosis and product selection, emphasizing the pivotal role of the gut in maintaining optimal health.

Throughout the episode, Roland delves into the crucial stages of the master philosophy, highlighting the interconnectedness of the digestive system with systemic health. He begins with foundational gut support through digestive enzymes and hydrochloric acid supplements to unravel the root of many health issues. The episode progresses into offering systemic support and addressing specificity in health strategies, underlining the strategic use of supplements to bolster the body’s natural healing processes. Roland’s insights illuminate how these stages can guide listeners in their journey towards health recovery and optimal wellness, encapsulating the philosophy’s potential in a market flooded with complex and often contradictory health advice.

Key Takeaways:

• The master philosophy offers a structured framework to address health issues starting with digestive health as a basis.

• Digestive enzymes and hydrochloric acid supplements play a pivotal role in creating a healthy gut environment, essential for avoiding systemic health problems.

• Phase two of the philosophy promotes systemic support, focusing on the use of nutraceuticals and herbal extracts to manage immune stress and inflammation.

• Specificity in supplement application allows targeted support for particular body systems, furthering personalized health recovery efforts.

• Roland emphasizes using supplements strategically to empower natural healing without over-relying on them as sole solutions.

“The microbiome of our digestive tract is like the soil of our body." 

Transcript

0:00:02 Roland Pankewich: Welcome back to the following your Gut podcast, where health science meets clinical wisdom. It’s great to be back with you guys today and I’m doing another solo venture here and I want to talk to you about something that was actually created out of a wonderful happenstance, but it ended up being a wonderful thing. As far as the US Enzymes Master supplements philosophy has evolved and this is the idea and I love the name master as a wonderful root for anything marketing or branding.

0:00:35 Roland Pankewich: I want to teach you guys about what we call the master philosophy today. And the master philosophy is many things. It is a framework of how to potentially approach, I don’t want to say self diagnosis, but if you are someone who is struggling with some unknown unresolved symptom or symptom presentation, it’s a way to maybe start when it comes to buying some products for yourself if you don’t know where.

0:01:04 Roland Pankewich: It’s also a non specific way to address potentially everything if someone is in compromised health because it treats nothing, but it helps everything. And if you are a practitioner or someone who is wanting to expand your clinical repertoire of product knowledge and use, it’s. It’s an idea or an ideology of how to group products in specific categories based upon the entire product portfolio that we have.

0:01:34 Roland Pankewich: But I really think it does lend itself well to people who are wanting to be their own health warriors, their own, you know, specialists, so to speak. It gives them an idea of how to start something with a logic and a rationale that is not something that is complicated and dangerous potentially, like heavy metal detox on your own, or some kind of, you know, insane biohacking experimental thing that may yield an incredible result, but it might also yield absolutely nothing or worse, some state of compromise.

0:02:06 Roland Pankewich: So the master philosophy to me looks through the lens of most things that people suffer from or struggle with that develop into issues start within the digestive system. I have this, this way of looking at things when it comes to the human body. The human body is not a segmented separate series of organ that somehow are just cobbled together unknowingly. I look at it as one interconnected ecosystem where everything has a very specific purpose and how it works with and complements everything else.

0:02:41 Roland Pankewich: And in that interconnected system, a problem in one area will ultimately result in a problem in all areas if enough time goes by. Hippocrates said that all disease begins in the gut. It may be an oversimplification, but it also might be incredibly accurate. Because if you think about your digestive system, even though it’s inside of your Torso, it’s still the outside of your body, because the inside of your body is anything that actually interfaces with all the cells and the tissues.

0:03:14 Roland Pankewich: So if it gets into the circulatory systems, it’s inside your body. If it’s in your gut, it’s the last layer of protection. It’s the final barrier between the outside and the inside. So if that ecosystem breaks down or that that system of fortification breaks down, problems are almost a certainty as time goes on. And let’s be honest, A, who has a healthy gut these days? Very few people call them unicorns if they do exist.

0:03:44 Roland Pankewich: But B, the digestive system was not built to be a good physical barrier. It’s good to be built to be a good absorptive barrier because it’s meant to get nutrition into the body. So you can’t have both, unfortunately. You can’t have a good physical fortress that no one can come in if you invite them to dinner, if your house has multiple doors and people can just walk in off the streets and sit at the table.

0:04:08 Roland Pankewich: It’s basically what the digestive system is, if we carry that example out a little bit further. So the reason all disease potentially begins in the gut is must tie into the fact that if you are suffering from anything or multiple things, supporting your gut is the first step in how we suggest starting. Because if you support digestion and if you make your digestive system work better, in some cases, some of the things that someone could be suffering with are rooted in dysfunctional digestion, are rooted in immune activation, are rooted in dysbiosis that started simply because you are unable to break your food down optimally.

0:04:49 Roland Pankewich: And this is where I suggest people use things like digestive enzymes and hydrochloric acid supplements, because the goal is not to use a supplement for the rest of your life, because you cannot sustain without it. If you take a look at the name supplement, it’s like a noun and a verb at the same time, right? The action and the intention of what it’s meant to be used for is in the name. It is a supplement to the thing that either should be there or could be there, but is not there at the moment.

0:05:19 Roland Pankewich: And the reason I suggest starting with a digestive enzyme or hydrochloric acid is this is where most people start to create the downstream problems that go wrong with the entirety of their physiology. Because they couldn’t properly break down proteins or properly break down and digest fats and carbohydrates. And as a result of that, their inner ecosystem of their gut lining the bacteria that live in their gut, their gut immune systems, the cells that hold the guts, the gut cells rather together, start to become leaky as all of those previous systems start to become compromised and break down.

0:05:56 Roland Pankewich: So your physical barrier has lost its integrity. Now all of a sudden you have a breach. And if you have a breach in the gut to the inside of the body, things that are meant to stay into the tube and, and leave, or things that are meant to be more completely broken down and are not get into the bloodstream partially digested, or the environmental compounds or bacterial toxins or whatever it is that you have in your gut that’s getting into your circulatory system through those gaps can create some serious problems.

0:06:29 Roland Pankewich: As that happens, it also starts to change the inner ecology of the gut bacteria. It changes the inner environment where those gut bacteria reside. And it can prime you for a state of what’s called dysbiosis. And if you continue to eat especially low quality foods in less optimal ways, meaning you’re not properly making, eating your ritual. And if you haven’t heard that episode, I do a very deep dive on digestion. So I, I encourage you to go back and listen to it or not.

0:07:01 Roland Pankewich: If you haven’t listened to it, listen to it for the first time. But every time you eat, it’s a chance to continue throwing little bits of paper and very, very dry wood on that fire. And it continues to change the inner environment to a suboptimal environment that can promote dysbiosis, pathogen accumulation, yeast and fungal overgrowth, parasites and things of that nature. So that’s where we go to phase 1B. So if phase 1A is supporting digestion and the digestive system, phase 1B is where you start to bring in things that are directly targeted to help rebalance the dysbiotic ecology, the dysbiotic overgrowth of bacteria in your gut that is creating a microbiome that is disease promoting, not disease preventing.

0:07:50 Roland Pankewich: Because we have to understand all these little critters that live inside of us, they are incredibly important to do a few things. One, they anchor the inner environment of our digestive systems. Two, they are in chronic communication with our immune cells and our immune system to make sure that if there is a threat, it’s properly dealt with. If there is no threat, everything is copacetic and calm. They’re also there to help prevent certain species from overgrowing, colonizing, infecting, because what affects us negatively, affects them negatively. And, and they want to live and thrive just as much as we do.

0:08:27 Roland Pankewich: So here’s where we have all the different probiotics within our portfolio. The Therolax, the True Floras, the Tru Bifidos. And I encourage you to go on our website and look at some of these products because what it does is it allows you to know where these probiotics are meant to be used, under what conditions. And it’s really cool because if someone’s got a problem in their lower GI system, we can focus on that with a probiotic choice upper GI system, same kind of deal.

0:08:51 Roland Pankewich: But there’s also other things that you can do here that involve binding things so they get out of the system upon waste removal. You can do some digestive cleansing with agents that can help potentially eradicate the buildup of pathogens, dysbiosis, things of that nature. And you can even support people who have issues with certain foods like gluten and casein. So this way, if they get trace exposures of those foods when they go out to eat, then that’s something that they can actually address and feel more confident in the fact that they’re able to deal with such things without necessarily triggering a flare up or manifesting a negative symptom that’s gonna be with them for a few days or a few weeks.

0:09:35 Roland Pankewich: So creating the foundation in step one is really about digestion. And then step two is you get into what’s called systemic support. So this is step two of three. And when digestion breaks down in that little story that I just told you, you can start to throw around these, these terms like immune activation, oxidative stress, toxicity, accumulation, and those things can be localized to the gut and those things can also be systemic and influencing the body negatively.

0:10:07 Roland Pankewich: And this is where disease, not health, but disease can be very confusing, very complicated, because it truly is a black box for every single person. Sometimes someone who’s dealing with some stress, viral overload for burden, for example, they might be so vitamin D deficient that they start taking vitamin D and that might clear their thing up. But someone else who’s got a serious viral burden might also have co infections of bacterial overgrowth.

0:10:35 Roland Pankewich: They may have gallbladder dysfunction, they may have, you know, food sensitivities and endotoxin issues in conjunction with the thing that they already think they have. So there is no one quick way to deal with everything. But if you understand some of the patterns of how those processes work in the body, this is where you can start doing things or taking things that might help to take some of the burden and stress off of the immune system might help to block or push down potential pathways that are upregulated in a pro inflammatory response. For example, it gives you the ability to use things like nutraceuticals and herbal extracts with a little bit more strategy.

0:11:19 Roland Pankewich: If you know a what it is you have going on, or if it’s something that is very general and undiagnosed or unbeknownst to the clinician that you may be working with. Certain things might be general support that help the body prevent its progressions from accelerating that disease. So this is where you use general immune metabolic support ingredients as well as take care of the foundation of continuously supporting your digestive system.

0:11:53 Roland Pankewich: So we kind of start with phase one A and B and we bleed it into phase two. Because unless you have resolved your digestive issue, if you take away the support, you might actually start recontributing to the development of the thing that led to the immune stress that’s creating the either degenerative or potentially pro inflammatory immune stimulating process. So that’s phase two of three. The last thing that we look at is specificity. And what I mean by specificity, say someone has a pre existing diagnosis.

0:12:26 Roland Pankewich: Here’s where you can continue supporting in the first two phases, but also get a little bit more targeted with some of the products that we have that allow you to be direct in your application of where you’re wanting to use these products. Master supplements, as you heard from the very first episode, really started with digestive Health. And then as they evolved in their, I guess, their journey, their story, they bought a company that manufactured the highest quality enzymes. And everyone thinks digestion when they think enzymes.

0:13:00 Roland Pankewich: But in other parts of the world, enzymes are more thought of as an empty stomach supplement to help the immune system resolve chronic immune stress that is driving an inflammatory process that usually dovetails into some sort of degenerative condition. So the cool thing about enzymes is not only are they incredibly safe, there’s almost zero contraindications to taking empty stomach proteolytic enzymes. Unless someone’s potentially on a blood thinning medication, then they might not want to.

0:13:33 Roland Pankewich: But they’re also highly effective because they basically lower the activation energy of any biochemical process in the body. And when the body is in a perpetual state of immune stress and crises, your immune system is working overtime. Your white blood cells are being attracted to various sites of inflammation, and these processes are both trying to heal you, because inflammation is the first step of healing. But, but if that inflammation is unresolved, these processes are hurting you while trying to heal you, which is Kind of a catch 22.

0:14:06 Roland Pankewich: So the system specificity is really about knowing how to target specific areas of the body with the correlating enzyme that supports that. So if someone has circulatory cardiovascular issues, they might want an enzyme that helps us support the blood flow in the cardiovascular system of the arteries. If someone has respiratory issues, they might want something that targets that. If someone has soft tissue, connective tissue issues, they might want something that targets that.

0:14:34 Roland Pankewich: So now you have this really nice phase 1, 2, 3 that allows you to be complete in your process, especially when it comes to us, because what we do is digestive wellness and enzymes. So it’s a way to approach the use of these products clinically, but it’s also kind of like a philosophical examination of how to address the body through different ways of knowing how it’s interconnected. Things start in the gut, typically they evolve in the gut and the gut breaks down. They become a systemic problem over time. That systemic problem usually concentrates in a specific area and that area becomes the focus because the, the system, sorry, the symptomatic presentation is most obvious in that area.

0:15:21 Roland Pankewich: And by no means is this a complete education on how to address healthcare, nor is it a specific way of how to clear up any potential issue that’s related to immune stress and inflammation. It’s just an approach. Because the wonderful thing about, you know, health and health sciences, we’re learning new things all the time. And there are multitudes of different ways to heal the body, which is an incredible thing because it doesn’t mean there’s only one way to get there. I think that gives people hope, but you do have to figure out the order of operations, so to speak, and the right variables of moving backwards in time from the point of most aggressive manifestation of something back through the healing cycle. And hopefully, you know, you don’t get stuck in the healing crisis, which is where the vast majority of people are nowadays.

0:16:10 Roland Pankewich: Because as a society we’ve never been so sick. And my whole intention with creating the master philosophy started with a way to categorize things in a logical workflow that made sense. But what came out of it was this approach that taught people a systems thinking way of how to use a supplement. Remember, it’s a supplement, it’s not the fix, it’s something that the body uses to help the body fix itself.

0:16:35 Roland Pankewich: But it’s something that taught you how to use a supplement in a more strategic way. Because the goal of taking any natural health product in my mind, is for that product to work effectively. So the body is able to take that signal in, help itself by restoring energy to overcome the injury that it’s facing that’s driving the illness and ultimately get back to a state of optimal health. So if you do want to learn more about the Master philosophy, there are some really cool graphics and flow charts on the website, so I highly encourage you to check some of those things out.

0:17:14 Roland Pankewich: And I really want to thank you for the opportunity to go through this because I actually haven’t ever really try to describe this to the general public since we created it. And it’s hopefully something that fosters thought. It is a basic framework that can be taken and remolded to fit the description of how a specific practitioner sees the world. Because everyone’s lens is very unique. It’s a wonderful thing about the natural health world and things that are outside of it can be added, it can be evolved, and it will be evolved as time goes on.

0:17:46 Roland Pankewich: So I hope that was interesting to all of you. If you are a health warrior out there and you’re learning about yourself as you’re treating yourself, I commend you. I hope this is information that will help you in your journey. If you are a practitioner and you are someone who is wanting to deepen your knowledge of how products work, or how the application of a product might be optimally timed versus when it might not be, I would encourage you to potentially think about implementing this, or at least your version of it, through the lens of what it is your practice full philosophy is, and I hope it does end up helping you.

0:18:21 Roland Pankewich: We’ll see you guys soon for another episode and as always, be well. Thank you for listening.