Gut health, you've heard it all over the place, it's very much a buzzword right now, but... What does gut health even mean? What's your good? Why should it be healthy? What does it do? Why should you care? Well, I'm gonna start breaking that down for you in this episode, there's a lot to say here, so I'm actually breaking this into two episodes, so today we're talking your gut, what it is, what it does, why it's important, and why it really is something that you should pay attention to... I'm also gonna break down some of the myths, make the science easy to understand, so that you can have a real working knowledge of how your body works or doesn't work, as the case may be. Alright.  Let's get to it.

 Before I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder. I had no idea about gut health and the power that my gut actually had over my entire body. I didn't even know it was a thing. In the next two episodes, I wanna give you a real solid understanding about your gut and why it's a topic that you've been hearing so much about lately, how it works, how it goes wrong and how to fix it, you might have noticed that thus far in the podcast. What are we on episode 11? So far, I've given you kind of a groundwork of the mindset pieces, I wanted to sort of lay that foundation so that we could build on it as we go, and today I wanna start laying that foundation for the nutrition pieces, because remember are three pillars of wellness what you put in and on your body, how much move your body and what you put in your mind... So I wanna start laying all these foundational pieces, and there is no more important foundational piece to talk about when it comes to nutrition than the health of your gut, and as you hear today, you are definitely gonna hear why that is.

 

So let's start with what even is your gut and why should you care about this?  So your gut is technically every part of your entire digestive system from your mouth to your anus, your mouth, your esophagus, your stomach, your small intestine, your large intestine, your colon as part of your large intestine and your rectum was where it all comes back out. The kind of peripheral players in your digestive system are the pancreas, the liver, and the gallbladder, the word gut gets really confusing, I think, because people use it to describe any part of that entire system or the system as a whole, so they could be talking specifically about the small intestine, but say gut, and you don't know exactly what part they're talking about, so I wanna be really clear as I go today and tell you exactly which parts of that entire system that I'm talking about. So let's talk about first digestion and how that works. So digestion, just kind of at the 20000 foot meta-level, to put it real simply, it starts in your mouth, your saliva starts breaking down the food, that food goes down your self, I guess, into your stomach where it's turned up with stomach acid and kind of waves in there and gets all mixed up, and that goes into the upper part of your small intestine, this is where your pan-Korea starts to release digestive enzymes to break down the carbs and protein, Your liver makes Bill to break down fat that bile is stored in your gallbladder and your gallbladder is what actually releases the bill into your intestines to break down those fats, so that ball of food as it's digesting continues to break down and be separated into its smaller parts as it goes through the small intestine, and as it's going through your small intestine, all of the nutrients and things that your body needs are being absorbed through your intestinal wall and into your bloodstream, that's how you get the nutrients out of food, there's a zillion chemical process and chemical processes involved in that, but essentially that's what's going on.

 

And so then what remains of that food goes into your large intestine, from your small intestine, mostly it's a combination of water and electrolytes like sodium and chloride and waste products like plant fiber that couldn't be digested, couldn't be broken down, and any kind of dead cells or debris from the lining of your digestion, digestive tract, so that all goes then into the large intestine, most of the water at that point is absorbed out, and what's left is the PO, and then the PO comes out of the rectum. So the digestive system is really fascinating to me because if you think about it, it's just one big long tube, like imagine one big long hose coiled up in your body that starts from your mouth and ends at your anus, or imagine it like a gas pipeline that was underground from Alaska to Texas. Your digestive tract is one big huge long gas pipeline, pun intended that is separate from it from the ground that it's in, so the contents of that gas pipeline, the gas is separate from the ground. So the pipeline is in the ground, but the contents of the pipeline are separate from the ground, that's important to think about, because your digestive track just like a hose, is within your body, but it is very much separate from your body in a lot of ways, that's what we're gonna talk about now, your gut and your microbiome, so the term gut health is like a very general term that encompasses a lot of processes, mostly people are using the term gut health to refer primarily to the small and large intestine and what's happening in there but really, the idea of gut health encompasses the whole process, mouth to anus and the peripheral organs as well, for example, acid reflux, which normally you would think of in your esophagus is a gut health problem, Irritable Bowl, which happens further down, like in the large intestine. Also a gut health problem, right, two very different locations, but I'll consider it under this realm of gut health, the other thing you have to consider is that no part of your body operates on its own, every single thing that's happening in your body, every symptom you have every problem you have, every great thing you have is all happening in concert with all the other parts, so if I'm gonna talk about one part, I have to talk about the whole...

 

I think that's something that gets lost a lot of times. Because a lot of doctors and kind of western medicine in general really wants to treat each of those pin points system, I got a pill for that. So it's a symptom, and I got a pill for that symptom, and I got a pill for that symptom, but that's not looking at the whole person and how your entire body is working together, and so that's kind of a shift that I want you to start thinking about, Okay, you're taking a pill for asset reflux, but acid reflux is a symptom of other things that are going on in your gut and in your body that you're not necessarily treating with that pill, so I want you to just start thinking about your body as a whole and how this all works together. And you are going to get a really clear idea of that in just a second, when we start talking about your microbiome. So in terms of gut health, microbiome refers to the bacterial makeup, especially in the large intestine, but also in the small intestine, so when you hear the term microbiome, mostly we're talking about the large intestine and the bacteria that live in it, but

 

Also know that in your small intestine, there is also colonies of bacteria that live there, and in both places, there are good bacteria that are beneficial to your body, which we'll talk about in sick and there's bad bacteria in your body, you know. Probably remember from high school, science is constantly trying to find a state of homeostasis, right, that balance between good and bad, hot and cold, up and down, your body is constantly trying to maintain homeostasis, that's literally it's one job and keep you alive by maintaining homeostasis. Well, the same is true for the bacteria in your gut, large intestine, small intestine, and we want a proper balance between good bacteria and bad bacteria. The study of the gut microbiome is still a pretty young science, it really only started getting serious in the 90s, so if you can imagine, it's not well studied and we have a lot to learn, but what we do know is absolutely amazing. And I'm gonna tell you about that right now. Your human body was created to work in harmony with these bacteria and viruses at any given time, you have literally trillions of bacteria and viruses on and in your body. Now, when I talk about good and bad, some of those are helping you and some of those are little opportunistic, some of those viruses or bacteria are waiting for a breakdown in the system, a crack in the system where they can get in and take advantage and try to take over the organism. That's what happens when you get sick. But our bodies have been made to work with this system of bacteria, and it's an absolutely incredible, incredible system, so you have 10 to 400 trillion microorganisms in your body, microbes in your body, out number human cells, 10 to one, and you have more microbe cells, DNA than human cells, DNA in your body, that literally makes you more micro than human, so you wanna talk about the importance of these little microbes that live in your gut, there are more of them than there are of you more cells and DNA material in your body from them, then there is of you.

 

In fact, scientists even speculate that autoimmune diseases are not passed down in families because of the passing down of human DNA, they're theorizing that some autoimmune disorders are actually passed down through the DNA of the microbes, so you literally are being passed an autoimmune disorder through the microbe DNA past repaired to child. Fascinating, right. So your colony of microbe starts at birth, as you shoot through the vaginal canal, you're covered in all these microbes, which is a really good thing, baby's born by C-section are at a microbial disadvantage, they have far less exposure to those really healthy microbes, so they are a little bit at a disadvantage in terms of immunity and other things, and you'll see why in a sec, your biome also grows from being breastfed, so those babies that are best breastfed get more of that microbiome bacterial information from the mom. And you also get a lot of it from your environment, so different places in the world have different microbial make-ups in their gut, so someone who grew up in Japan will have a different microbial make-up than someone who grew up in Texas. And your microbiome is so personal to you because it's, again, passed on from parents, and then it's also impacted by your environment, it's as individual to you as your fingerprint is fees microbes, your own personal microbiome is incredibly powerful at telling your body what to do...

 

One of the ways that it does that is through the enteric nervous system, this is called your second brain, and for good reason, think about when you have butterflies in your stomach, that's an example of the direct connection between your gut and brain, and when I say direct, I mean, direct, you have a vagus nerve that it goes directly from your gut, so your intestines is what I'm specifically talking about to your brain, and all of those trillions of bacteria in your gut are literally sending messages through that Vegas nerve directly to your brain in fact that enteric nervous system has 100 million neurons, that's more than your spinal cord... Or your peripheral nervous system. Your peripheral nervous system is like arms and legs, everything that comes off the spinal cord, so the connection between your gut and your brain has more neurons than your entire spinal cord that control your entire body. This is how important this is. So your vagus nerve carries those signals between your gut and your brain, interestingly, 90% of the signals go from your gut to your brain, not from your brain to your gut, it's not that your brain is telling your gut what to do, your gut...

 

Your intestines are very much telling your brain what to do. So all of those bacteria in your gut are the messengers, they are telling your brain what to do, how the rest of your body should function based on what's happening inside your intestines at any given time.  So incredibly important, again, if we think of the body as a whole, if there's stuff going wrong in my intestines, I am messing with the whole system, right, because it goes... Those messages go to my brain and then for my brain, it goes out to the rest of my body, and I'm jacking up the whole system if my guts not right, this health of your gut is so amazingly important to the health of your entire body. In fact, there's even new fields of study coming out, one of them is called neuro-Gastroenterology, so that's the study of your gut brain connection. We're gonna talk a lot about that in future episodes, believe, I want you to just have a good primer today, there's also a field of study called Psycho-Neuro-Immunology.

 

And so that's the connection of your brain and your immune system and your gut...  Speaking of your gut brain connection, 95% of serotonin in your brain, remember serotonin is your feel good hormones, serotonin is the thing that those with depression are lacking serotonin, that feel good hormone, 95% of it is created in the gut and then sent through that vagus nerve through the enteric nervous system to your brain, so the ability of your gut to influence your emotions is very real. There are so many studies coming out that we'll talk more about, that they are using treating your gut to treat depression and anxiety specifically, but also autism and all kinds of other disorders, treating emotional disorders by treating the GU and yalls working. The Importance of Your Gut is so huge, so we know it's huge for health, we know it's huge because it's controlling the rest of your body, we know it's huge because impacting your emotions and the functioning literally of your brain, it's also in charge of your immune system, these microbes, these bacteria in your intestines are in charge of your immune system, they help regulate immune homeostasis, and they help even launch immune responses, so imagine... I mean, it makes sense, because if you eat stuff and it's coming into your body, that first line of defense is your mouth, and then your intestines, remember because they're within your body, but separate from your body, they're the first line of defense against any kind of invader or pathogen that might enter your body, so these microbes are super important, they're turning on and off your immune response, that's why gut health is so important.

 

0:18:46.4 S2: When we're talking about auto-immunity, because we need our gut to properly recognize healthy cells and invading cells, cells that are me and selves that are not me, your microbes are telling your immune system what to do, so not only are they regulating the local intestinal immune system, killing stuff there, but they're also regulating the systemic immune response, your microbes are telling your immune system what to do, 7% to 80% of your immune system resides in your gut and your intestines, there is this symbiotic relationship between the two... They work together, these bacteria and your immune cells, they're constantly communicating, and so if you have a really robust and healthy and really varied microbiome, a really large variety of different bacteria, that's what you want, that creates the healthiest immune environment, but  Your immune system is not necessarily telling your microbes what to do, this is again, this communication is a lot one way, it's your microbes telling everything else what to do, not so much the other way around.

 

The other thing to consider is when we're talking about weight loss, so in terms of weight loss, your microbes are telling your body what to do, your microbes are telling your brain how many calories to absorb, how much protein and different nutrients and facts to absorb. It's telling your body how to break things down certain ways, your microbes are telling your body what are we lacking on, what do we need... If your microbes are... To put it in the most simple terms, I can... If your microbes are sensing, We're really low on some sugar energy, I can feel the blood sugar dropping, I'm getting signals from here, this is happening, then your microbes are telling your brain, we need more calories and we need... And we need sugar calories, and you will then go each other... Your microbes are literally telling your brain what they want, however, here's the problem, if you have the wrong kind of bacteria in there, if you have a so-called bad bacteria or the wrong types of bacteria, or overgrowth of the wrong type of bacteria, you might have a lot of bacteria in there that really want sugar, and so they're gonna keep telling your brain, I need more sugar, any more sugar, any more sugar, even though your body doesn't need it, the bacteria are the ones that want it, but your body doesn't necessarily need it, so this is where we start to get into trouble because the healthy bacteria, the ones that are doing their job for us, if they're outnumbered by the bad bacteria, then the signals of the bad bacteria win, and they might be sending signals to our brain that aren't helpful to us, so having the right, having a varied amount and of different types of bacteria is really important, but also again, that ratio of good and bad bacteria is going to determine how ultimately our body is functioning and how easy it is for us to lose weight.

 

It's having some control over our brain signals and our cravings, it has a lot of control for a lot of pieces that you might be struggling with with weight loss. Here's something interesting to think about as well, there are new studies being done where they're comparing the microbiome of healthy people to less healthy obese people, and they're comparing the bacterial makeup of both of their gaps, and what they're finding is that the sin people, the people that just don't have a weight problem, have a very different bacterial make-up than the obese people, what they also have found is that if they take the fecal matter... So a fecal transplant. Yes, it's exactly what you think it is. They take that fecal matter that's full of all of the bacteria from the gut of the healthy person, and they inject it into an obese ran the route, loses weight and becomes a quote then healthier at if they take the fecal matter, that bacterial environment, all those microbes from the obese person and put it in a thin healthy rat, the rat becomes obese. No other change has occurred, literally the only thing that changed was a change in the micro-environment in the gut, it made the healthy wrap, fat and the fat rat healthy.

 

This is amazing science. Transplant sounds disgusting, but what if getting healthy could at some point be so simplified by simply just injecting the proper microbiome into your body. Now, this has a lot more implications that need to be studied, this is not something you're gonna be able to do any time soon, but the idea of it and the science of it is so promising for helping those of us who struggle the most to really be able to make a quick change to a microbiome, most of us have to change our microbiome the slower way, and that's what we'll talk about on this podcast, until fecal transplant is a thing that you can all do. Maybe I'll try it someday. Who knows? Okay, so let's recap so far, what we know about the gut, your gut technically is your entire digestive track, it's a hose, the coach from your mouth to your anus, through your body, but not necessarily part of your body. The

 

Most important part when we're talking about gut health is that small and large intestine, that's where your microbial environment is, and that's where all the action is happening. All Of those bacteria, whether they be good or bad, or both in that gut, are telling your brain what to do and are telling your immune system what to do, and are really truly running the show, that's why it's called your second brain, the Health of your immune system is also dependent on the health of your gut and a healthy homeostasis between good and bad bacteria. So now, if you take that a step further and again, think about your whole body as a whole, you can see that the health of your gut, the make-up of your microbiome can literally influence every part of your body, whether that's a positive influence or a negative influence depends on the make-up of your microbiome.

 

So your gut is controlling any kind of disease process that involves inflammation, intent, every disease process involve inflammation, so think about autoimmune disorders, cancers, joint pain, skin issues like acne, Azeris, food sensitivities, inflammatory bow, thyroid conditions, poor nutrient absorption any kind of digestive problem, and we're even talking about things like obesity, allergies, Parkinson's, getting colds and flu frequently, remember, 'cause that's your first line of defense against invaders is your gut. So just about any ailment you might be suffering from can be traced back to the gut, and that's why this is the thing that it's so important for us to get healthy and for us to really address, if we're gonna talk about a long-term weight loss and wellness program, we cannot do it unless we address the health of our gut. So this is gonna be a topic we're gonna talk a lot about, and I hope that I can bring you the science and also then bring you the real life tactics of what tangibly to do so that we can start turning some things around for ourselves. So for now, I just want you to be super aware of the importance of the health of your gut.

 

Next episode, we're gonna dive into exactly how all of this goes wrong, how we end up destroying our gut, what that does and how it creates disease process in our body, and then how to fix it, because I really wanna tell you how to fix it. So make sure you tune in next week. Share this episode with your friends, I think this is gonna be a really important two-series episode for them to listen to. And Then if you haven't, get... Hop online to Teramo dot com, check out the 12 weeks to weight loss and wellness program. It's coming up quick, and I want you to be a part of it. But health is something that we really address in that program, and so if this was valuable to you, that will be even more valuable to do, 'cause we go way more in-depth and we talk exactly what to do and how to fix these problems and how to get yourself healthy From the gut out. I hope that was super helpful to you guys, I hope it wasn't like a fire hose of information. The transcript for this episode is always in the show notes, so if you wanna actually read through it, you could do that as well, always on Terraform and dot com, just at the podcast tab, and all the podcasts are there, so make sure you subscribe and review if you liked this one, leave me a review so I could read it on the next one, I love hearing how these podcasts are impacting you, I really, truly appreciate those reviews. So until next time, my friends. Be well.