Episode
· 01:02:24
All right. Well, Is this anyone's first time here? Just by show of hands? Awesome. Welcome.
Dr. Barrett:Welcome. But yes and no, yes and no, that's right. Where coffee? Is That's a great question. Too late for coffee for me but a good decaf would be nice, that'd be nice.
Dr. Barrett:Let's dive in man. We're stoked that you guys are here and our goal tonight is just to add value to you and your journey. And so we're gonna be very educational based tonight. So we really want you to learn, know, understand why things are the way they are, whether it be food allergies or what supplements to take, what foods heal the gut, all those questions in a modern world today where we're seeing more transparently it's eczema than ever before. It seems like we're getting these babies in at 18 and two years old.
Dr. Barrett:There's just full body coverage of eczema. Food allergies are just through the roof. Mom has pre autoimmune, it's passing down to baby and it's just a generational issue that's just climbing and gut related issues, immune issues. So tonight's gonna be good. I think it's gonna be really good for you.
Dr. Barrett:The goal is to get done in an hour and get you guys out because I wanna eat dinner and go to bed. So tonight's all about the gut but really it's about the immune system. When you register for the workshop, you guys sent some questions or topics. So we're gonna try to hit all of that tonight. I'm gonna show you guys the lab examples of patients that walked through the office and the issues they've dealt with and what we see in their labs.
Dr. Barrett:And hopefully give you everything that you're looking for tonight. If you have any questions at the end of it, I'm rolling out. So you can't ask me. No, I'm kidding. I'll stay for a few minutes if you guys have any particular questions.
Dr. Barrett:So the team is Doctor. Luke, myself, Lillian, Parker and Grant, and we're all here to serve you tonight. And then Kylie's here from Armor Beauty. And so again, if you guys have any questions, let us know. Ready to dive in?
Dr. Barrett:Let's do it. So let's start off with the reality when it comes to the gut, what most people assume is like it's a food issue but it's not, it's a gut immune issue. So we're gonna talk about why food allergy is so prevalent, why it's fundamentally a gut issue or an immune issue and what that immune issue is because if you understand what the immune issue is then you know how to resolve it. And so what if your gut symptoms aren't about food but are about your body is, but about how your body is reacting to the food. So how your immune system sees food fundamentally, that's the question.
Dr. Barrett:All of these symptoms that you guys listed that you had questions about whether it's eczema, whether it's food allergies, whether it's IBS, whether it's colitis, diverticulitis, whether it's autoimmunity. I mean, even thyroid issues or brain fog, fundamentally we can tie to this singular issue that we're seeing at such a high prevalence today, all right? We're gonna talk about that, what that singular issue is and then we're gonna talk about what the causes are behind that particular issue. So this is not a food problem. Fundamentally, it's what we call it a tolerance issue.
Dr. Barrett:It's what we refer to as oral tolerance. So oral tolerance is this, when you eat food, your immune system says that's food, I'm gonna ignore it. I'm not gonna do anything to it and it's gonna get digested and then absorbed and those nutrients are then gonna be used to create energy and rebuild the body but fundamentally eat, absorb and ignore. Not react to the food and not attack your own body. So the loss of oral tolerance is where your immune system fundamentally starts to react to things that it shouldn't.
Dr. Barrett:So what should your immune system react to? Give me something it should react to. Virus. A virus, perfect. What's another something it should react to?
Dr. Barrett:Bacterial. A bacterial infection or a parasitic infection, right? These organisms that they're bad and the immune system should recognize it and it should set up a defense system, initiate that defense, knock it out and move on. But what we find is that the immune system is now seeing food as a virus. It's seeing pollen as a virus.
Dr. Barrett:It's seeing certain proteins. We'll talk about the three main ones as immune triggers. So when tolerance is lost, when oral tolerance is lost which is fundamentally is this and this is what I teach. This is a, when I sit down with patients and I go through autoimmunity, the cause of autoimmunity and I sit down, I go over a stool analysis and talk about these organisms in their body. This is it.
Dr. Barrett:This is the one point I want you to understand tonight. Oral tolerance is simply the loss of the body's ability to recognize self from non self and food is safe. That's it. The immune system's confused. And so why do we talk about the immune system when you're here for a gut workshop?
Dr. Barrett:Because 80% of the immune system is within the gut. And if you wanna heal the immune system, we heal the gut. If you wanna heal the gut, you gotta heal the brain. And then we can go levels deep and we're gonna talk about all those levels and how they connect but fundamentally that is what the loss of oral tolerance is and your ability to regain tolerance is the cornerstone to the restoration of health and healing of your gut, of your immune system, of your inflammation system. So when tolerance is lost, food is now officially a threat.
Dr. Barrett:Does anybody recognize any food in their life that would be a threat to them? They feel the effects of that. What would one of the foods be typically? Dairy, yeah, milk, gluten. Sugar, eggs.
Dr. Barrett:And you guys just listed the big three. The immune system activates, inflammation increases and then symptoms show up everywhere. So it could be why is my joint swollen? Why is my thyroid hypo functioning? Why do I brain fog?
Dr. Barrett:Why does my digestive system hurt whether it's bloating? You know, there was a time where I was speaking at this conference putting together a program and explaining MS, autoimmunity. And I showed an MRI of a celiac, untreated celiac brain and a MS brain and they were identical. They were identical in terms of where the inflammation or degeneration was set in. Celiac and digestive issues fundamentally starts to attack the brain more than really the gut.
Dr. Barrett:A lot of people have brain symptoms before they have gut symptoms. Like you'll see brain fog before you'll see sometimes bloating when it comes to food reactions but your body wasn't designed that way. God created it to be tolerant of its environment. So let's get into now what I feel like is like the big five. So I'm gonna give you the big five.
Dr. Barrett:The big five is these are the five fundamental issues of why tolerance is lost, okay? So if you wanna know the why, this is now we're getting into the why. You know the what, the what is oral tolerance loss leads to every symptom you could deal with. Now the why. The first problem is the gut barrier problem and these are in no particular order, these are just your top five.
Dr. Barrett:So the gut barrier problem. Your gut lining is a filter, okay? And so it should allow nutrients in and not these large particles. So think about your gut lining is super tight junctions and when they open up, right, this is what we would term like leaky gut. Okay, leaky gut.
Dr. Barrett:Now I've heard a lot of people say I've got a leaky gut. That may be true, but more often than not true leaky gut, it can be tested and determined but most people don't have really leaky gut in the beginning. It could be progressive over time but as that gut barrier starts to break down, what happens is it starts to leak larger molecules in the body, particular food proteins, okay? So food is supposed to be protein specific, it's supposed to be digested in the stomach and then as it gets digested, it works through the bacterial system and it starts to kind of eat away at it and breaks it down into nutrients and amino acids get absorbed, okay? But when you have a gut barrier issue, a leaky gut problem, those larger food proteins leak itself right into the bloodstream and those large food proteins are the immune system sees it and says, woah, those aren't supposed to be here and then immediately sets up an inflammatory effect.
Dr. Barrett:So those large food proteins, remember your immune system only reacts to protein. It doesn't react to fat. So people feel so good on things like ketogenic diet or paleo that are more like higher fat, quality protein, removing some of those inflammatory triggers. Your body only reacts to protein. You can be hyper reactive to peanuts but really you have no reaction whatsoever to peanut oil.
Dr. Barrett:It reacts to the protein structure. That's the issue. And when that gut barrier is damaged, those food particles cross into the bloodstream, the immune system reacts and this becomes the trigger. Here's what's interesting. The same exact barrier in the gut, that lining is the exact same barrier in the brain.
Dr. Barrett:So the blood brain barrier is the exact same structure as the gut barrier. They're almost, they're nearly identical. They have the same structure. When the gut barrier is broken down, guess what else is broken down? All the time, every time and that's your brain barrier, okay?
Dr. Barrett:Then when the blood, that's why we get foggy. That's why we feel cognitive decline. That's why we see a strong correlation of dairy protein and Alzheimer's dementia, okay? It's one of the most important things to check. Does this patient react to casein?
Dr. Barrett:And if they do, fundamentally it's gonna affect 23 different regions of the brain and cause an inflammatory cascade. Dairy can be a massive trigger in the inflammatory cycle of the brain. All right, that was number one. So the number one issue, first issue is gut micro, oh sorry, gut barrier. Number two is microbiome.
Dr. Barrett:So this is what you would normally consider like your probiotic or bacterial system. So you have trillions of bacteria in your gut but you also have beneficial yeast, you have beneficial bacteria and that should coat the intestinal wall. It should be in the colon, the large intestine. It really shouldn't be in the upper or small intestine. If you do, when you eat something of a certain type of food, could get severely bloated right after.
Dr. Barrett:That bloating is what we call SIBO is from bacteria in the wrong spot. The bacteria should be in the lower part and you should have a lot of them. There are two most important things with the bacterial system. Ready? All right, diversity and quantity.
Dr. Barrett:You should have a lot of bacteria of different forms. Those are the two most important components to a good probiotic system. So if you eat the same foods over and over again, you're not creating diversity. How do you feed your bacteria? More important than the probiotics you're taking, what's the number one way you feed your bacteria in your gut?
Dr. Barrett:Give me the food item. Give me the type of food that feeds bacteria. Who said fiber? Yeah, fiber, yeah. So fiber is your prebiotic.
Dr. Barrett:Fermented foods, that's tons of prebiotics. And when you consume different colors, it feeds different organisms. So purple carrots, right? Orange carrots, sweet potatoes, right? Green peppers, yellow peppers, orange peppers, raspberries, blueberries.
Dr. Barrett:As you diversify the color, you diversify the bacteria. That's why it's important to eat seasonally because you're feeding your gut seasonal foods that support different bacterial loads. The microbiome problem though is, and then we see it chronic antibiotic usage. It is way over prescribed. We all know that we take antibiotics for virtually everything.
Dr. Barrett:Even if it's a virus, we're giving it to at a super young age, antibiotics we live in a hyper sanitized environment. So there's no beneficial bacteria in this space. You get it from being outside, but then your yard is sprayed with glyphosate and so we just don't have that diversity and we need it. That's really important to us. And when we have good bacteria, you have a tolerant system.
Dr. Barrett:And when we have, you can have bad bacteria and I'm gonna show you an example of a couple cases that had bad bacteria and the issues that we saw with them. So your bacteria help decide what your body tolerates, your gut barrier that is supported to what goes into the blood. The number three is inflammation. This is a chronic inflammation is a problem. How do you get chronic inflammation?
Dr. Barrett:This is really from toxicity. So glyphosate is a massive, just destroyer of the gut, plastics, petroleum, heavy metals, chemicals. These are problems that drive inflammation of the gut, okay? So this is gonna be more in your chemical issue or toxicity issue. So is it important to eat organic?
Dr. Barrett:It is and you can look at your dirty dozen list. So type in dirty dozen, those are the dirtiest foods, the most sprayed foods. Those are the most important 12 to buy organic. Your meat should definitely be organic, the dirty dozen should be organic And then if you don't buy organic, just white vinegar soak and that helps as well. Okay, so inflammation really turns your immune system on.
Dr. Barrett:In short, this is helpful. If you've got a virus, you're gonna have inflammation. You gotta knock that guy out but long term chronic inflammation is where we start seeing destruction of the gut barrier. And then it obviously allows the body then to start reacting. We see this a lot.
Dr. Barrett:So this number four, the digestive problem. So we run a GI map, a stool sample. We look at the digestion system. What does that mean? We look at like enzymes and acid levels.
Dr. Barrett:How well are you actually digesting the food you're consuming? A lot of that's dependent upon your stomach acid levels, your pancreatic enzymes, your gallbladder, those are important systems to make sure you're breaking out fats, proteins and carbohydrates. And as we age and as we're stressed, we just stop producing as much enzyme and acid. And as that happens, we are in a situation where we're not digesting food properly leading to these larger proteins that then bypass and get into the bloodstream like we just talked about, okay? And truthfully, just to kind of side note here, acid reflux is not because your acid levels are too high, they're actually too low and you're regurgitating undigested food.
Dr. Barrett:Your acid levels actually have to be at a certain level for a certain valve to be closed. So when you're not digesting food, your acid levels are low, you're not digesting food, your body still thinks it's eating, the valve stays open and now we're regurgitating. It's funny because you'll get on proton pump inhibitors Nexium, Prilosec, Prevacid and that's gonna lower your acid. That's pretty much gonna negate all the acid in your stomach and you're gonna feel better because you're not obviously regurgitating acid the little bit you have, but I mean, did you just create a further issue? Sure, you perpetuated the cycle.
Dr. Barrett:And so now we're really in trouble because we're not digesting food at all and this furthers the issue, right? Okay, and then the fifth problem is if the body is stressed, you cannot heal. It's simple and we know this, we fundamentally know this. How do we know this? Because before like a sporting event, like when you were a kid or I mean, you know, we took the girls and Doctor.
Dr. Barrett:Luke to go play golf and hole one. I mean, they're nervous, their tummies are getting all bloated. When you're stressed, you are going to feel that effect. You feel it in your gut. Why do you feel it in the gut?
Dr. Barrett:Because there's two systems to the nervous system. There's fight or flight, run from danger threat and there's rest digest. Do you hear it? Fight or flight, rest digest. You can't digest in fight or flight.
Dr. Barrett:When your sympathetics are turned on, which means you're in fight or flight, you can't heal. And so you've heard probably a ton, has anyone ever heard of the vagus nerve the last couple of years being on Instagram, social media? Has anyone heard of the vagus nerve? Yeah, I mean, just ten years ago, nobody heard the vagus nerve, okay? Nobody heard breath work, nobody heard about getting zen and helping your parasympathetic, nobody learned that but now we're seeing it, it's so important.
Dr. Barrett:If we improve our rest digest system, we can heal. It doesn't matter if you address the first four issues, chronic stress will kill you and it'll kill the gut. How do we improve our rest digest system? Fundamentally, it's why you get adjusted. Almost all of you are under chiropractic care.
Dr. Barrett:Why do you get adjusted? Well, because my hip hurts when I play golf or, hey, I've got high blood pressure or I actually feel good, I just wanna stay healthy, great. But hey, did you know every time you're getting adjusted, you're helping that nervous system shift into rest digest every single time. And that's one of those powerful tools to help the gut heal is getting adjusted. I sit down with little kids all the time and we say, Hey, I'm gonna give you my best recommendation.
Dr. Barrett:We're gonna change your nutrition. We're gonna get on supplementation. We're gonna help you sleep get better and you're gonna get adjusted. What does adjustments have to with anything? That's exactly what it has to do with.
Dr. Barrett:It helps the nervous system shift into rest digest. Getting adjusted is so essential to that system. You cannot heal your gut in a stress state. So those are the five barrier, microbiome, inflammation, digestion, nervous system. Those are your big five and the results of that is loss of oral tolerance.
Dr. Barrett:And one of these issues are gonna be a bigger problem for you than another. I'm gonna help you understand all of them and give you some practical tools to take home but how do you know? Well, fundamentally that's when you test and look at it individually for yourself but let's get into it. First, I'm gonna start with some labs. So has anyone ever had like a food allergy panel done by a show of hands?
Dr. Barrett:Just put them up high so I can see them. One, two, three, four, five, six, okay. Put them up real high. If you don't mind, you don't have to answer this but keep them up. Put your hands down if dairy was not on there, eggs were not on there and then gluten or wheat was not on there.
Dr. Barrett:Yeah, can you put it down? So every, almost every single ninety five percent or more of food allergy reports, there's your big three, okay. Your big three is dairy, egg and wheat. Dairy, egg and wheat, just is. I see it every panel and you're like, well, that's all I eat.
Dr. Barrett:Well, let's talk about that, okay? So lab findings show when we run a food allergy report, I say, hey, do you wanna spend a couple $100 and look at your food allergy report? Yes, let's do it. These come back. Now there's other ones that come back with it that you may or may not eat.
Dr. Barrett:Not everyone drinks camel milk. I have seen camel milk elevated on some laps but these are your big three and then there's outliers. So if this was random, we wouldn't see random, we would see random foods but we don't, we see the same foods over and again that are the most reactive and these foods but fundamentally like we talked about are not the problem, are the target. Why these three foods? Because we eat them the most because they're in everything we eat them the most.
Dr. Barrett:So are we going, if the issue is food, right, then versus being a oral tolerance issue, okay, then we would see randomness. But the fundamental problem is we lost tolerance, our gut is inflamed, we have a leaky barrier and what are the foods that most of us eat all the time or what's in most of our diet and these are the big three. So of course we're gonna react to what we're consuming. So you do a food audit report, well that's 60% of the foods I eat every day and then there's some other ones that I didn't know about But those are the foods I eat every day. Well, yes, of course you're gonna react to the foods you eat every day because we eat a lot of them and we're creatures of habit and we're stressed so we just kinda keep things simple.
Dr. Barrett:And so that's why one of the main issues with dairy, egg and wheat is because we eat them every day but those are not the problem. Those foods are not the problem. I eat gluten, I eat dairy and I eat eggs. Sometimes in seasons I haven't been able to. Eggs made me super foggy.
Dr. Barrett:When I was training for a really long race, I was stressing my body, I was inflamed, I wasn't recovering well. I was running in the middle of the night like it wasn't ideal. And what was I slamming? Tons of oatmeal to get my carbs in, tons of eggs like eight, nine, 10 eggs a day. I mean, slam and try to get my protein carbs in.
Dr. Barrett:And after the race, ran a food allergy report and oats were through the roof, maple syrup was through the roof, why maple syrup? So let's put maple syrup on those oats. Eggs, I couldn't eat eggs for about a year because of how bad I really broke down my gut barrier from chronic overtraining. So we eat them the most, they are the most highly reactive proteins. Those protein structures, they also mimic certain tissue in the body.
Dr. Barrett:So when you're reactive to gluten, guess what else your immune system's gonna react to? What organ? Thyroid. Thyroid. Yep.
Dr. Barrett:So if you have Hashimoto's we say you can't have gluten. Why? Because your body will react to both. Dairy, brain, it's a big one. The gut berries, immune systems destroy everything we just talked about but those are your big three.
Dr. Barrett:So if you just even wanna start somewhere, what do you remove? You remove the big three and then you slowly add some of those back in later to see how you feel and we'll talk about that. What do eggs mean? Eggs is gonna be more arthritic, so joint collagen as we see some cross reactivity there. Okay, so if those are your big three, what are the things that we're seeing when I run a, what we call it a GI map.
Dr. Barrett:So it's a stool sample to look at infections, bad guys, good guys. Do you have good bacteria? Do you have bad bacteria? How's your digestion? What's your inflammation levels?
Dr. Barrett:Are you autoimmune? Are you not? Are you reactive to gluten? Are you not? Are you potentially celiac?
Dr. Barrett:We're not sure. We're gonna look at all of those things, okay? Are there viruses, parasites? We're gonna look at that, that's a GI map. So that's what I'm referencing to.
Dr. Barrett:I took three random ones that I've recently done and these are the results, this is what we see. So these are the three conditions that I just recently pulled up in GI map lab portal and these were the symptoms. First one we're gonna go through is eczema. The second one was a case of urticaria. This was like hivish response, on the face and then autistic spectrum.
Dr. Barrett:High functioning but definitely was on the spectrum. First case eczema, what did we find? We found bad bacteria in almost every kid that has a GI complaint, a brain symptom of some sort, almost every kid we find strep and staph. We see them in almost every single kid. This one has some H.
Dr. Barrett:Pylori, there's your strep staph, there's some bad bacteria present, a lot of inflammation and the inability to digest and this is what produces eczema. So we take steroids for this guy, okay, inflammation and it calms it down but the reality was we had dysbiosis, had bad pathogens, we had bad bacteria, we had poor digestion, high inflammation levels. Does that sound like anything? It sounds like the five things we just talked about, right? It's just right there and we see it in a GI map.
Dr. Barrett:And so what we see is the eczema explanation which we're seeing so much of it is fundamentally the skin is the largest organ in the body. So that inflammatory response we're seeing on the skin, there's cross reactivity because of gut inflammation causes the immune system to activate, really over activate. Hyper reactive immune system, we gotta calm that immune system down say, hey dude, it's okay, we can chill out. But all it's seeing is these large food proteins leaking into the blood and causing the reaction and that's resulting in our skin symptoms. The hives, this is similar stuff, strep, H.
Dr. Barrett:Pylori immune systems, food reactions were elevated, almost the exact same situation. So just showing you no matter labs we're seeing the same story, okay. When we saw this case, they had a little bit more in the dysbiosis category, which should be more of the bad bacteria or parasitic infections were a little bit more prominent, but it was the same story. I mean, we saw a pathogenic bacteria immune system was suppressed. We see that through a molecule called secretory IgA.
Dr. Barrett:Keep that in mind because we're gonna talk about colostrum and why that could be such a powerful tool but we see the same story again and again, right? So we can just assume that we all pretty much have these guys, these bad guys in us, guts kind of broken down a little bit, we have high inflammation levels and we wanna heal, right? That's why you're here. So let's get into how do you heal the gut. So there's gonna be two options tonight.
Dr. Barrett:One, you're gonna walk away with just like immediate practical stuff and you start applying it. Here's reality, let me just tell you. You can't make drastic changes in multiple areas of your life and expect to hold on to those for more than a couple of weeks a month, maybe more, maybe if you've got a lot of willpower to you can make 1% change every day over the course of a year and create 37% change at the end of the year. That's what you can do. Don't expect perfection.
Dr. Barrett:Take one or two things tonight, apply them, be consistent. When you're consistent, then add another. When you're consistent, then add another. That's the only way you're going to create a journey of healing and health. But if you're trying to take off more than you can chew, right?
Dr. Barrett:Then you're gonna get overwhelmed and you're like, oh man, stop doing this, stop doing that and then you're right back to ground zero. So just be attentive like let the Lord kind speak to your heart. What's the one thing that you can apply in this season that's gonna move the needle in your health? That's the goal of this next section. So let's talk through fermented foods.
Dr. Barrett:By show of hands, who consumes a serving of some type of fermented food or fermented drink every day by show of hands? Okay, about half. Okay, so fermented food, exactly what it sounds. It is living food that's been cultured. What gets cultured?
Dr. Barrett:It's the carbohydrate or the sugar and bacteria combine and form sugar alcohols, enzymes, B vitamins. So it's a powerhouse. So it's got your prebiotic fiber, it's got your good bacteria, billions of bacteria, okay? It's got enzymes, it's got vitamins. So that is what a fermented food is.
Dr. Barrett:Now, some of my favorites gonna be in your kimchi space. I love kimchi. You can do obviously kombucha. I handle dairy now in this season of life I hear it pretty, handle it pretty well. So I'll do cultured dairy so like a kefir.
Dr. Barrett:Even if you did a whole milk kind of grass fed yogurt, a lot of times that yogurt has bacteria put in into it and we call acidophilus, lactobacillus. So any of these sauerkraut, kimchi, kefir, yogurt, kombucha are all fantastic ways to support your gut on a daily basis. So that super vinegary kombucha, right, that's what you're doing is you're supporting your beneficial bacteria in your gut. That kimchi, that sauerkraut, right? That's healing foods for the body.
Dr. Barrett:So let's just say, hey, let's pick one thing that's least reactive and that's typically gonna be sauerkraut kimchi or like just a clean sauerkraut is fantastic. Just like some kombucha, half a bottle a day is great. It's a great way to start. And this will fundamentally support your good bacteria and prove the diversity and so this is something important to keep in mind. Don't drink the same kombucha over and over again because you're literally consuming the same bacteria, right?
Dr. Barrett:Like GT's Kombucha synergy, love it. Ginger beer, love it. But it's the same strand of organisms you're putting in your body. So switch brands next week or next month, right? Go get Health Aid Kombucha, go get a different brand.
Dr. Barrett:It may not be the same, may not like it as much but it will help diversify the bacteria, okay? Same thing, you get some Bubbe sauerkraut and then go get some Korean kimchi, switch it up. These are my favorite gut healing foods and my favorite fundamentally is a bone broth. Twice a year, I'll usually do an extended fast and after an extended fast which to me is anything like over three days would be an extended fast. It is very important to reintroduce properly and the first thing I reintroduce for healing my gut, healing my gut specifically, okay.
Dr. Barrett:It also gives you energy from amino acids and fats but healing my gut is bone broth. We do a big pot of bone broth. Now I'm just sipping on that drinking on that. That bone broth is very healing. The collagen is very healing to the gut.
Dr. Barrett:So any type of collagen rich foods, you know, when you look at what are collagen rich foods outside of bone broth, where would you get some collagen? Any thoughts? Anybody eat sardines? Okay, salmon and you got those little bones, those little bones that sometimes don't spit them out, munch on them. They're just small, they're small.
Dr. Barrett:You just swallow them. They go easy. They go down easy. I like to, we buy these big planks of salmon and we sear it at a really high temp on our Blackstone and then I'll eat the salmon skin, it's full of collagen. I know you're not gonna eat eggshells but that's technically collagen but that's no, that's weird.
Dr. Barrett:So that's where you get some collagen rich foods but bone broth is probably your biggest source. And then obviously you guys know like the last probably what five years collagen supplementation has been a big thing. So yes, that helps hair, skin, nails but it helps your intestinal barrier too and blood brain barrier. This is where you get just a nice sauteed veggie is where you're gonna get those fibers. So just make it just purple cabbage and red onion and orange peppers and just make a little saute that will diversify that bacteria.
Dr. Barrett:And it remembers the fiber and the antioxidants that's really supporting that. And then healthy fats, fat is essential. So diversifying your fats, olive oil, having more saturated fat from coconut oil, butter, grass fed beef, salmon, sardines are all great ways to give you the raw materials to help that gut. So there's your fermented foods, that's your just everyday foods that are gonna be building blocks to the gut barrier. And then how do we calm the gut barrier down?
Dr. Barrett:So let me just give you, this may be your 1%. This may be your 1% that you take home. Your 1% could be, you go and buy like a gallon, sometimes they're just half gallon containers of aloe vera juice, aloe vera juice, okay? So not aloe vera drinks that are in the fridge, literally like a clear liquid of aloe vera juice. And every morning you wake up about four ounces of aloe vera juice and you just drink that down and then you drink your water.
Dr. Barrett:Aloe vera is one of my favorite home remedies to reduce inflammation of your gut, of your body, of your joints, of your brain, everything. It is one of the best ways to heal from acid reflux, indigestion, bloating, just the sensation GI symptoms specifically is aloe vera. Anyone can take it. I recommend it to kids just even a couple of years old to help calm down their inflammatory issues like eczema and so four ounces of aloe vera can be transformational for the gut. It's one of my favorite things.
Dr. Barrett:Slippery elm, has anyone ever had slippery elm tea like their actual tea, tea like loose leaf tea? Tastes like a, like you'd be drinking a texture of like a snot. I know, it's gross. It's slippery. It is slippery.
Dr. Barrett:Slippery on the way down. Really, I'm a texture guide, it's not the best but we do it. So that's what do we call it? We call it mucilaginous mucilaginous or mucus mucilaginous. What's your mucosal membranes, right?
Dr. Barrett:So that's why it's beneficial. Slippery elm and marshmallow root would be, okay, chia seeds, you ever soak chia seeds and they get mucusy? Sorry to destroy your visual next time you eat. Remember the chia seed drinks? Could you get one of those down?
Dr. Barrett:The texture was like, could you drink them? I couldn't drink them. You do? You're amazing. She's awesome.
Dr. Barrett:I couldn't. See, these are terrible. I'm drinking a big booger. It's just awful. Bones are better than a big old snotty booger.
Dr. Barrett:But one of my favorite things to do, aloe vera and if you want a good breakfast, you want a good breakfast, a healing breakfast, let me give you a healing breakfast, okay? Chia seed pudding. So get a bunch of chia seeds, whole chia seeds, okay? I would order them online so they're fresh and not sitting in the store and you put them in a blender. The first thing you do is you blend them raw so it cracks the shell, okay?
Dr. Barrett:And then I throw in coconut milk but I do the can of coconut milk, not like the container but the actual can that's pure coconut milk and I throw that in. Then I'll do vanilla, I'll do some sea salt, some raw vanilla extract, sea salt and I'll usually add some type of like collagen or protein powder or something to give it some protein. And then so you mix that up and then you let it sit in a big bowl and it'll just become a just a big, you know, chia seed pudding, okay? So then I'll scoop out a couple scoops in the morning, I'll add some raw, I like to add like raw cacao nibs and some fresh fruits and blueberries and then I knock that down. You talk about healing, that is a healing food.
Dr. Barrett:That is a healing food. Chia seeds is a fantastic food for the brain because of the omega-three fatty acids. But then it also gives you that gut healing property. And then, hey, if you're dealing with any type of acid reflux, indigestion, heartburn, and you immediately want a solution, this just go get some licorice. Particularly it's called DGL which would be a licorice like chewable, DGL but that's just immediate, like immediately calming to the gut.
Dr. Barrett:All right, what do we remove, right? What we remove, so this guy right here is a destroyer of the intestinal lining, okay? So alcohol destroys the intestinal lining. Frequent snacking, what do you think frequent snacking does? Let's just say it's even just carrots or something healthy.
Dr. Barrett:What would it do? What do you think it's gonna deplete? Stomach and enzymes. Enzymes, yeah. You're just constantly feeding that system and your body doesn't have the ability to regenerate those levels.
Dr. Barrett:So when you're in a constant feed, you're not in a rest repair. So you need to feed, rest repair, feed, rest repair. Typical recommendations of four, four, eight. So that means breakfast, wait four hours or more, lunch, wait four hours or more, dinner, wait eight hours or more till the breakfast, four, four, eight. That gives your body time to heal.
Dr. Barrett:You don't need to be in constant feed, feed, feed, feed and by snacking, my wife used to snack on almond flour crackers, just all the time. She's a mom, she's got four kids, she's running around, she's snacking like you're snacking yourself to like hunger and deficiencies and remove your stuff. So I don't wanna hear it, you're not raising four kids like I am? Like you got that right, you do you boo. And then years later I was like, Hey, you're not snacking on those, where's those almond flour crackers?
Dr. Barrett:So she always comes around. Oh yeah. Ultra processed foods, inflammation, sugar inflammation and also feeds bad bacteria and yeast. So if you wanna feed all the bad guys eat sugar and if you wanna increase your inflammation levels, obviously processed foods. Digestive enzymes, one the best ways to rebuild your enzymes is, well I'll just give you a little functional medicine pearl, okay?
Dr. Barrett:So how do you know if you have low stomach acid? This is what you do. So you go by pure Betaine HCL, hydrochloric acid. They're hydrochloric acid tablets, just pure Betaine HCL. And what you'll do is before your largest meal a day, let's say that's lunch or dinner.
Dr. Barrett:You take one capsule right before your first bite and you'll notice, hey, did I get any burning sensation in my stomach? Like did I feel heartburn? You don't have to think you might have felt like it'll be very obvious. If you didn't, then next day, next meal, you'll go to two And then if you didn't feel it, next day you go to three and then four and then depending on the dose, which is usually about seven fifty milligrams, don't go more than five. If you go more than five, which I've had patients go more than five, we've got a severe deficiency.
Dr. Barrett:But what are you doing? You're building your acid levels to the point where there's too much acid and it can spill out. In that moment, that sensation is very burning in the stomach. You feel it in the stomach, it's too much acid in the stomach. You won't really feel it in the esophagus, it's not gonna come up the throat, gonna feel right here, right in the stomach, too much stomach acid.
Dr. Barrett:So let's say that was five. Here's your way to reset your stomach acid. Your next day, your big meal, you're gonna do four tablets, you're gonna drop one. The one that caused it, you're gonna drop down and you're gonna do four. You're gonna do four every day until that warming sensation comes back and then you go to three every day until that warming sensation then two and then once you hit one, you've pretty much reached the limit and can just take a digestive enzyme but it's one of the most effective ways to get your stomach acid levels reset.
Dr. Barrett:And when your stomach acid levels reset, you're absorbing and break down minerals and vitamins and all the things that your body Did you know you can't absorb B12 if you don't have stomach acid? So if you're B12 deficient like hey, why is my B12 levels low? I supplement all the time. Hydrochloric acid, number one reason to activate B12. So let's talk through supplementation.
Dr. Barrett:What are some of the common supplements I would recommend? So the first one would be a digestive enzyme. So digestive enzyme, if you feel like you have issues digesting like when you eat, how would you know? When you eat, you feel bloated, maybe you have reflux, maybe your stool shows undigested vegetable fibers or food, that's how you usually know, okay? Reflux.
Dr. Barrett:So digestive enzymes taken before a meal can help you digest that food and most people would benefit from a digestive enzyme. You can also take a shot of like apple cider vinegar, That's an option, okay. Like a one to one ratio of apple cider vinegar to like to water, just so you're not just full on vinegar down the throat. So that's another good option for you as well. I like to just drink a little bit of kombucha before a meal because there's a lot of enzymes in that.
Dr. Barrett:But it's one of my favorite gut supportive supplements. Another one would be probiotics. Again, I don't take a probiotic because of all the fermented foods and prebiotic fiber I consume. But if you've been on antibiotic recently in the last, it takes one antibiotic around, it takes a year to regain your intestinal flora back, one year. So to help that process go a little faster, taking a probiotic, making sure it's a spore based probiotic.
Dr. Barrett:You can actually have a rebound issue where you don't wanna take a regular probiotic after your antibiotic, okay? But probiotics are fantastic to support the gut specifically soil based, SBO. One of my favorite things and it would be transformational for you would be colostrum. I'd literally prescribe it just about everyone. Colostrum, what is it?
Dr. Barrett:So cow milk first part, there's a bunch of what's called an immunoglobulin and colostrum. And what that does is it supports the immune system of the gut. We all, right, it's hyperactive, hyper reactive but it also could be really low functioning. Colostrum is like your balancer. It'll calm down a hyperactive immune system and it'll build a low functioning immune system.
Dr. Barrett:Colostrum also binds toxins. So what I didn't mention before is all the bad bacteria of the gut releases something called an endotoxin, a toxin into the bloodstream that creates an inflammatory issue. It binds those toxics as a natural binder, okay? How do you consume it? It's usually in a powder form, it's best consumed.
Dr. Barrett:What I like to do is I grab whey protein, put a scoop in there, add a little creatine, add my colostrum, shake it up and I knock that down. That's how I consume it. How's another way to say it? Put it in a smoothie, it's great in smoothies, okay. It is heat, it's heat unstable so you don't wanna heat it.
Dr. Barrett:You wanna consume it in a room temperature form, okay. Room temp allows it to mix better unless it's a smoothie then you can blend it and that's fine. But colostrum powder helps heal the gut, calms the overactive immune system, helps rebuild natural immunity, binds toxins, it gives you growth factors to help tissue repair. So a lot of athletes are now consuming a ton of colostrum daily to help their tissue, muscle recovery and joint health. So I mean, and the list could go on and on.
Dr. Barrett:It's one of my favorite kind of discoveries in my health during the last ten years is using colostrum and it's really been popularized over I'd say over the last three years, we're seeing a lot of it. As long as it's grass fed, you're great, grass fed colostrum. If you are a dairy reactive, you know you're dairy reactive, there are some colostrums that are non dairy protein colostrum in essence. So you do wanna be mindful of that, right? Because the main thing that you're gonna react to in dairy is casein.
Dr. Barrett:You can react away to a degree but it's casein usually is the biggest offender. L glutamine is usually a powder that you can take if you know you have an intestinal barrier issue. How do you know? You have food allergies. That's how you know.
Dr. Barrett:Like you consume a food and your body, your brain feels fatigued and you feel swollen tired right after about an hour, that's probably you could benefit from five grams of L glutamine a day. So that's gonna help the gut barrier specifically. And then other things that have been shown to be really good would be zinc is fantastic for the gut, fish oil is fantastic for the gut, magnesium is gonna be specific to the nervous system that's gonna help the gut. And then deworm our kids every year, twice a year usually and we give them anti parasitics and anti microbials and I think you should too, that'd just be my recommendation. So what do you take?
Dr. Barrett:Well, there's a lot of options, right? I think ivermectin has been popularized recently, which is great. I think you have other options. One of my favorite things to do and we have it on the shelf it's called Biocidin. Biocidin, it's a liquid antimicrobial, it's olive leaf extract, it's oregano oil, it's garlic, it's berberry.
Dr. Barrett:There's these different herbs, black walnut, that's antiparasitic, antiviral, antifungal, antibacterial. So it kills everything in a very general way and taking a couple drops a day can be very, very helpful at killing bad guys. Now I wouldn't start just going after it just detoxing yourself but it's definitely something that you would consider when working with a practitioner saying, hey, do a thirty day cycle of knocking some bad guys out of the butt, out of the gut, out of the butt. That's where they would go, out of the gut. So that would be strep staph, parasites to a degree.
Dr. Barrett:Know, kids, anybody have kids under the age of let's just say 10, under the age of 10. Okay, few of you, yeah. Yeah, I would deworm them, I would deworm them. How do you deworm them? The big issue that we see in kids is itchy butt.
Dr. Barrett:You know, you see their hand in their butt and you're like, dude, your kids got worms. Deworm your kid. Itchy butt, nighttime wakeups, nighttime wakeups. So nighttime wakeups it's because parasites are the most active at night. It's when they like to crawl out.
Dr. Barrett:Yeah, it's haunting. It haunted my wife. So pinworms are a bigger issue than people think. So I've tried to treat pinworms naturally. Because one of my daughters was complaining about tummy issues.
Dr. Barrett:Like middle of the night, well not middle of the night, she fell asleep, fifteen minutes I go in after she fell asleep, spread her butt cheeks, flashlight, you see obviously that's when you see pinworms, that's when you see it, okay. It's the best time to look at it. So she had a couple pinworms, you're like, all right, girls got pinworms, welcome to almost every kid at that age. So how do we, so I was just trying to treat it, nothing was working. And so I discovered just this really simple over the counter pharmaceutical called Rhesus pinworm.
Dr. Barrett:And it's a large molecule that cannot penetrate the gut barrier. So that's the first thing. Second, it just paralyzes the worm, take a serving. Next day, my wife was haunted. There was so many dang pinworms in that girl's poop and you see it over and over again.
Dr. Barrett:I mean deworm your kids and then you retreat in two weeks, the life cycle of parasites. So, and when you deworm a kid, you deworm everyone in the house. Now, well, what about adults? Yes, you should deworm yourself too. Now you're not gonna be as vulnerable to pinworms because of sanitation purposes really.
Dr. Barrett:It's something as simple as that but that is still a reality. That's gonna be the large variety of parasites. There are other types of parasites that need more targeted approach and that's where you just got it like one of the common symptoms if a kid is having a parasitic infection, a random fever. They just have this random fever that then just goes away every couple weeks and they just complain about just their belly hurts, random parts of the day, their belly hurts, their belly hurts. A kid usually has some type of parasite and parasites are almost in all of us.
Dr. Barrett:So we would be mindful to consider doing a parasitic detox. How do you do a parasite? I'm glad you asked, okay. One of my favorite ways to do that is through a company called Cellcore, have it over there CellCore and you do it around the full moon. Well, why do you do it if I'm glad you asked.
Dr. Barrett:You do it around a full moon because that's when your melatonin levels are the lowest and parasite activity is the highest, okay? So that bright light moon, right? Keeps your melatonin level suppressed. Melatonin is a major immune modulator. It's one of the best ways to support an immune system.
Dr. Barrett:It's an antioxidant and when melatonin is low, which whereas melatonin primarily stored and made is in it's in the gut as well as your mitochondria, parasite activity increases. And that's one of the best ways to treat parasites because they come in life cycles. So you treat it a few days before a full moon and a few days after a couple of moons, full moons in order and that usually addresses most parasitic infections, okay. Here's your daily gut routine and this is about it. This is about all we got.
Dr. Barrett:Eat two, three meals a day, no snacking, okay. Again, we talked about why. Chew thoroughly. I know that sounds super simple but this is the first way you digest and as you chew that saliva immediately it's actually producing enzymes to help break down that food, okay? Hydrate between meals preferably.
Dr. Barrett:If you drink water or liquids while you eat, it dilutes your stomach acid. It's not, I know, come over my house and you're like, you're not allowed to drink while you're eating. Know, kids are like, dad, wanna, I'm thirsty. Like you just think you're thirsty and then they're choking. It's never happened before.
Dr. Barrett:Hydration between meals and then reduce stress. I'm not good at that one so good luck. Consistently builds gut health, okay, those are your big ones. And then, hey, there's patients here I know, I saw inquiries that there's some legitimate health issues when it comes to the gut. I mean, again, it could be eczema, it could be autoimmunity, could be irritable bowel disease like colitis or Crohn's or celiac or undiagnosed and the gut, the immune system is where you start.
Dr. Barrett:So a couple things that is generalized. So one of the things that we do here in functional medicine, Cairo The Real Health Co as a collective organization is there's two tests that we like to run. We talked about the GI MAP and then a food explorer, okay? So that looks at all your common foods that you might be reacted to. Typically you're gonna see egg, dairy, wheat of some variety, sometimes one, sometimes two, sometimes three and then you see a bunch of other outliers, pineapple, tomatoes, almonds, random things.
Dr. Barrett:So you look at a couple 100 different foods and you do a full GI map, okay? And then we set up a protocol and we go through usually about a ninety day kind of journey resets about how long it takes to really push through that first phase of healing the gut and immune system. So we're gonna open it up to where if you want to and you know you have an issue and you wanna invest in that area of your health, okay? Do your labs, consultation, all the above. Then I can take on five people to walk them through that journey, okay?
Dr. Barrett:So if you wanna walk through that journey, there's a QR code that you'll see that you can scan or you can talk with one of the girls and fill out an application and we can work together. The benefit is if we're able to do it in a way where we run everything together, we do get a discount. So that's helpful that it gets extended to you. And then I will be doing more of a Zoom based recording of your labs and send it to you personally and then meet up with you in the office every thirty days for ninety days. So that's a gut healing protocol.
Dr. Barrett:So hear me, if you have a significant health issue in your gut, your immune system, autoimmune, anything like that, don't just go home and self treat. Can you take aloe? Yes. Could you take some probiotics? Absolutely.
Dr. Barrett:Can you start taking nutritional changes? Yes. But this is for people that have a significant health issue and they need to move in that quickly and they need help, okay? So the testing is gonna include GI MAP, food sensitivity, your protocol, all your lab we're doing every thirty days, we'll do a follow-up, obviously supplementation plan, nutrition plan. We'll go through the main three phases.
Dr. Barrett:This is what we do with all of our patients, calm the inflammation issue first. That's one of the most important things. If you're trying to heal the body, you gotta reduce inflammation, okay? That's usually gonna come through food, finding those food triggers, food. You can do it on your own.
Dr. Barrett:How do you do it on your own? I would suggest the AIP, autoimmune paleo nutrition plan. That's gonna remove the most common food offenders. Yes, dairy is gone. Yes, eggs are gone.
Dr. Barrett:Yes, gluten's gone and nuts and seeds because those are common food reactions. That's how you reduce inflammation usually. Look at the dirty dozen list, reduce those as well. And then you repair the gut. How do you repair the gut?
Dr. Barrett:Strategy we talked about but particular to you and then you restore oral tolerance. If you've tried and this is one of the big things is you keep reacting to foods, right? You need obviously some specific guidance And it takes time to heal. You gotta know that too but it also taking more precise approach will get you there faster. It's $12.50.
Dr. Barrett:If we did all the labs, we did consultation costs, it comes out to about $1,800 in ninety days. That's my consultation fees, lab costs, everything. So we can get that down because of the way we're gonna structure the program and we'll communicate that more. And if you're interested, there is a QR code you can fill out and apply and there's one back there with Lillian. That is, that's pretty much a wrap.
Dr. Barrett:We'll hang out for a few minutes. If you guys have any particular specific questions, I'd be happy to help. Again, just choose one thing. How are you gonna move the needle in your health journey? What's the 1%?
Dr. Barrett:Maybe it's the chia seed pudding, maybe it's the aloe, maybe it's digestive enzymes, maybe you do the BT and HCL test, maybe you should remove those inflammatory foods but just take one thing, apply it. How long do I apply it? Great question, thirty days. If you can consistently do it for thirty days, you're ready to move on to the second one. But I wanna do more and I know you do but sometimes keeping it simple and consistent is the key to success and what I've seen just worked through the years, if you met me fifteen years ago, I'd say you have to do everything today, if you're not, you're gonna die, okay?
Dr. Barrett:Now I realize nobody followed the plan, okay? And I was just frustrated. So choose one thing, okay? Maybe you switch your coffee to organic instead of the mess with the type of coffee. Yeah, maybe, maybe.
Dr. Barrett:I know, I'm so sorry. But anyway, you guys need anything, let us know. Thanks for being here tonight. We will make sure you get an email for our next presentation coming up, workshop in about we usually do it every six to eight weeks. Awesome.
Dr. Barrett:Thanks guys for coming. Have a good night. We appreciate you guys. Hopefully it's helpful.
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