114 | It Starts with THE GUT!

Welcome back to another episode of the Real Health Podcast. The month of March, we've spent some time talking about the immune system as a whole. We've talked about how the immune system plays a role in allergies, how it plays a role in autoimmunity. Today, we're gonna have a conversation about starting with the gut. So why the gut?

Why do you start with the gut? Why is the gut so important in the health of the immune system? And what most people don't know is that 70% of the immune system is actually housed in the gut. And we'll talk about how that works, how the actual process of that works. And we just our first ever, what we call, a master class.

So this is a Zoom based master class. So you're not actually on the Zoom webinar in a sense with video audio. We're presenting through Zoom. But we used to do these pod- sorry, these workshops in office. We used to do these locally in Knoxville.

But because our reach has gotten so much bigger than Knoxville, we decided that we would be more approachable and help more people and add more value to people in their health journey if we broadcasted our webinars or our workshops through webinars, through a master class. So the month of March, we did it on the immune system. The month of April, this is all about the brain. So we're gonna talk about autism, we're gonna talk about neurodegenerative disorders, we're gonna have a master class on the brain. So a brain based master class.

If you are dealing with any type of neurological symptom like brain fog, headaches, migraines, dizziness, vertigo, or any associated disorders, whether it's autoimmunity based disorders like multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, or neurodegenerative conditions like dementia or Alzheimer's, or even concerned about those. Or on the other end of the spectrum, younger population groups, so neurodevelopment disorders, neurodevelopment behavioral disorders, autism, autistic spectrum disorders, ADD, ADHD, anything in that space. We're gonna talk about this at our Brain Masterclass in April. And it's always the April, so it'll be April 29, and that'll be at 6:30PM Eastern Standard Time here in the United States. Make sure you sign up through our Instagram link. So go to our Linktree in Instagram, and you'll find it.

Register for our next brain based masterclass. If you register and you can't attend, that's fine. You'll at least have the recording. Let's dive now back into the immune system why 70% of the immune system, 70% of the immune system is actually housed in the gut. How?

How is it housed in the gut? Why is the gut so important? Number one, because of something called the GALT system, G A L T, the "gut associated lymph tissue," gut associated lymphoid tissue. So this immune system command center, it's an immune system command center in the gut, includes this part of the small intestine. And this part, it monitors for pathogens.

So this lymph tissue monitors for bad guys, for foreign invaders, for viruses and pathogens like bacterial loads and other pathogens like parasites. And it's supposed to signal to your body's immune system to say, "hey, this is foreign, this is a problem, and we need to address it." It's why the lymphatic system, the lymph system is so integral, so important to the overall health of your immune system. Why? Because that lymph tissue is actually found in the intestinal lining.

They're called pyruvate patches, but they're found in the intestinal lining, the actual small intestine. So one, the reason why there's 70% of the immune system in the gut is because of this GALT system, the gut associated lymphoid tissue. Number two, the reason why the immune system is directly related to a healthy gut, healthy gut, healthy immune system, number two is microbiome defense. Did you know that there are literally trillions of bacteria in your gut, what we call microbiome, and they act as a first line of defense. They actually act as a line of defense for your immune system.

It's why it's so important to care for these organisms. And as we look into more and more data and research, we find that the organisms, these bacteria play a immense role. These commensal bacteria play an immense role in your not only immune system health, but your brain, your brain health. When we look at how they populate the gut, what they do is they actually crowd out harmful bacteria and yeast and other pathogens. So just the sheer volume of bacteria is so important.

There's two things that are really important to the microbiome defense. Number one, quantity. You need a lot of these organisms. Number two, you need diversity, quantity and diversity. You need a bunch of these organisms in a large variety of these organisms.

It's why we always talk about why we don't wanna take the same probiotic every single day. You don't wanna eat the same food every single day. You don't wanna consume, in essence, this myopic small amount of environment every single day. You need to diversify what's coming into your body. Number three, why the gut plays such a role in the immune system is because of not just the microbiome defense, but the actual gut barrier defense.

Did you know that your digestive system has an actual barrier? And this barrier, we call the gut lining, it actually acts as a selective barrier with selective meaning it only allows nutrients through while blocking pathogens and toxins. The same barrier, did you know the same barrier in the gut is actually the same barrier mimics the one in the brain. So the same way the brain prevents pathogens and toxins, the brain barrier, blood brain barrier prevents toxins and pathogens from entering the brain is the same barrier that prevents toxins and bacteria from entering into the blood. When that barrier breaks down, you now are, your Lyme defense has been broken and now you're susceptible to chronic inflammation associated with pathogens and toxins.

That gut barrier is so important. If this barrier becomes compromised, we call it leaky gut. Now, most people think they have a leaky gut, but not everyone has a leaky gut. There is a very specific barrier marker that we look at. We call them the zonulin and occludin zones, and there's actin junctions.

These can be tested. And actually rarely do I see these barriers truly broken. And if they are, if you have an occludin xylan breakdown, this is a big concern. It's a major issue in the body, okay? Most people think they have a leaky gut, but most people actually don't have a true leaky gut.

This is why it's so important to test this condition. Number four, your digestive system actually regulates inflammation. It is an anti inflammatory system. The gut helps regulate what we call immune responses, preventing overreactions that then can lead to autoimmune conditions, okay? Or even just chronic inflammation.

So, the gut actually helps regulate the immune system, but it does through regulating inflammation levels. If you feel inflamed, you gotta look at the digestive system. Number five, did you know that your gut actually trains the immune system? It's wild, but the gut constantly interacts with immune cells. And it educates them on, in essence, what's harmful and what's safe.

We call this oral tolerance, which we've talked about. But your gut actually trains immune cells to recognize what is good and what is bad. And it's why it's so important. That's why it's so vital to make sure we're taking care of the digestive system. We're healing the gut and supporting the gut.

And when your gut is not healthy, nothing else in the systems will be healthy. So how do we heal the gut? How do we support the gut? How do we improve the gut? Okay, number one, I'm going to give you some strategies, okay?

The first strategy I'm going to give you is I want you to take care of your microbiome. Again, what are the two things that we need? We need diversity and we need quantity. So how do we get that? I'm gonna encourage you to consume fermented foods, kimchi, sauerkrauts, kombucha, kefir, all great.

As we consume fermented foods, we're getting organisms in our body. I wanna encourage you to do some organic farming. As grow our own in soil, the soil based organisms are great, as long as we're not using chlorinated water to clean them off, are great for the digestive system, okay? So we wanna consume from our environment foods, and then we wanna diversify what we eat. Every single vegetable and fruit has, they have different colors, color spectrums, means they have different what we call polyphenols.

And every polyphenol feeds a different group of bacteria. If you eat the same foods over and over again, you can actually create a group of bacteria that grow and grow and grow. And this can actually create an issue where we don't have diversity. So make sure you're changing, interchanging your food with seasons. As seasons change, so should your food change, okay?

Add a new food in, add a new vegetable in, add new fruit in when the seasons change, and this will help create some diversity in the gut, all right? Now, take a probiotic. Probiotics are fantastic. Whether it's a probiotic, prebiotic combination, I think those are great. Number two, we want to help heal the gut barrier.

So the way we heal the gut barrier is through what's called mucilaginous products or foods. So what's mucilaginous? Mucus producing. It helps with the mucus lining, the mucosal lining of the body, which is the gut. Chia seeds, chia seed pudding is great.

Do get a recipe. Chia seed pudding is fantastic to help heal the gut. There's a tea called slippery elm that you can heat and steam and steep and then consume. Slippery elm tea is fantastic for the gut, but mucilaginous products are great to heal the gut. Another way to heal the gut from a supplement standpoint is glutamine.

L glutamine is a great healer of the gut, okay? It helps heal specifically the intestinal lining as well as zinc. Zinc and glutamine are two great combinations if you wanna heal the intestinal barrier, Okay, number three. So we talked about microbiome. We talked about the gut lining.

Number three, we need to create a healthy immune system of the gut. And the way we do that is through something called colostrum. Bovine or goat based colostrum is a great way to help regulate the immune system of the gut. It calms down an overactive immune system, and it encourages an underactive immune system. It's a beautiful balance point that we can consume.

It's full of what's called immunoglobulins, which help regulate the intestinal system, specifically the immune system of the gut. Colossum can be consumed in powder or capsule form. It can be consumed in a capsule from a company called Designs for Health. That's a great product called TegraCell Colostrum. But colostrum is great.

The powder form you can add to smoothies, you can add to like your chia seed pudding, which is what I like to do, or you can just shake it up and put it in a shaker bottle, shake it up and drink it down. Colostrum is very neutral in flavor, so kids like it. It's easy to apply. It's pretty much any population group, and colostrum is fantastic to help heal the immune system specifically of the gut. And lastly, number four, we need to reduce inflammation by reducing pathogenic load.

Pathogenic load. So parasites, viruses, and bacteria that have overcrowded the gut. We gotta get rid of those guys. We gotta clean them out. One of the best ways to do that is actually through fasting.

Fasting is a fantastic strategy. Number two, you can take different botanicals. Oil of oregano, garlic is fantastic. So consuming oregano, consuming garlic. If you take even just raw garlic every single day and you were to consume garlic, this would be a great strategy to start reducing the pathogenic load as it's antiviral and antiparasitic and actually has antibacterial components.

It's why garlic is so infamous at helping. It's why it's almost in every single anti pathogen based product for the gut. Garlic, garlic oil, garlic extracts, it's called Allicin is a fantastic anti microbial for the gut. It's one of my favorites. And then of course, what I mentioned just before, oregano.

Start adding these herbs and spices into your food as they can help significantly reduce that pathogenic load of the gut. And as you build up your normal bacteria, all the bad guys, they'll start to go away, calm down, and get cleared out. Okay? So when looking at the gut, when looking at the immune system, we gotta realize that 70% of the immune system is related to the gut. Start caring for the gut, start taking care of it, and it will take care of you. Thanks again for listening to another episode of the Real Health Podcast.

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