STOP BLAMING YOUR DIET FOR YOUR GUT ISSUES

Gut Problems Are Common

Dr Pompa 0:00

You have a gut problem? Well, you're going to want to hear this episode. Evidently, 50 to 66% of adults in the U.S. have gut problems, poor gut health, or at least they claim that. Uh, I think the statistics are higher. I think that some people just think it's normal. And they think it's perhaps just this food that they ate sometimes and they're sensitive to certain things. But the fact is, it's not normal. There is solutions. I'm going to tell you some of my protocols that I have learned that work over the years and have used for many different gut problems, because obviously there's many different types. Um, I'm going to talk about peptides. Y'all asked about them. I'm even going to have my team uh give me and feed me some questions that you all asked. So your questions are going to get answered. Um, but also what works, what doesn't? Um, what tests work? What tests are appropriate, um, or even testing when to test, right? When should I do a gut test? Um, what about food allergy? What about food allergy testing? What about SIBO? Have you ever heard of that? Small intestinal bacteria overgrowth? What about Crohn's, celiac? Okay, we're gonna get to all these. And I want to ultimately my goal is to give you some answers. Um, but I I do want to start here. I look, I'm known for educating doctors, I've done this for 20 years, uh, about getting upstream to the actual causes. So let's be

Why US Exposure Drives Gut Issues

Dr Pompa 1:23

real here. Uh, when we're in in the United States, the reason why so many gut problems um are so prevalent is because of the level of toxicity compared to even our European friends. And by the way, uh, there was a this is a true story. I was there lecturing. Uh, it was a seminar in Croatia. And by the way, I was just recently in France, so I have two different stories, but very similar in nature, that when I was at the seminar in Croatia, we had uh a lot of different practitioners, doctors from around the world, all time, all different countries. And the conversation went like this at lunch. Uh, well, you know, it was mostly European people at the table, and there was me and a couple other uh people from the U.S. And their comments were that basically if they're from the U.S., they probably have a gut issue. And they were kind of uh poking fun in a good way of people from the U.S. because of the gut issues. And then someone asked the question to their group Do you know, do you know any of you have gut issues, or do you know many people that do? Um, and they said, absolutely not. The one gentleman at the table, because I was about to speak up and say why, he said, the reason why the people in the U.S. have gut issues is because all the chemicals that they're exposed to, unlike us. And I was like, he is right on. You see, that's the big difference, right? If you look at what is outlawed and banned in Europe, uh, food compared to ours, uh, it's a lot of, they say it's over 600 different chemicals, over 3,000 different chemicals in general banned in Europe, that is still allowed uh for us to be exposed to, not just in our food, but personal care products. So keep that in mind, because the fact is, is if you can limit your exposure to the upstream causes, then the fact is, is that is where you start with any gut problem. And by the way, my recent uh uh my recent uh story from France was a very similar one, is um I was in a group uh of people from Europe and um this conversation got going. And I said, How many of you have gut problems? Nobody. Um, and so obviously I was asking questions. So that was me starting the conversation, but the outcome was very uh uh different. If you had this conversation with a group of even 10 people in the US, uh, I promise you, well, according to those statistics, six out of the 10 would complain of gut issues. But if you pressed in, I think it would be seven or eight out of 10 that would complain of gut issues and wouldn't even put themselves in a category of having a gut problem, but actually do. Uh, chemicals is the big reason. I look one of the chemicals recently out in the news, um, one of the uh first states to ban paraquat right here in the United States. Well, look, that's the uh is that's a chemical that is absolutely linked to Parkinson's disease. And I don't know if you saw any of my posts about uh this particular chemical um used on golf courses and living three miles within a golf course, 21% increase in Parkinson's. Why? Because the paraquat gets in the water and it's obviously blown in the air, and people living in and around golf courses uh are at much higher levels. But keep in mind, this chemical is being used on food. It's being, we're all being exposed to it. So if we have one state that's already banning it, I think that's a good start. How about glyphosate?

Glyphosate And The Leaky Gut Loop

Dr Pompa 4:52

Glyphosate is a chemical I have done many, many videos on that obviously goes into the gut. By the way, even if you have a healthy gut, let me just tell you what happens with this one chemical. It goes into the gut, it interacts with something called zonulin. It's an enzyme that has the ability to open up the gut. It does that for a very good reason. This is how we get nutrients across the uh the gut, certain things that we need across the gut, uh, even immune cells back and forth across the gut. So this is meant to happen, but this one chemical, glyphosate, interacts with that and opens up the gut. Here's the problem: anything that you just ate now has an ability, undigested proteins in that food to cross the gut. And we often call this leaky gut, but this case, the chemicals opening it up, causing the leaky gut, and undigested protein into the bloodstream, you start making antibodies to it, and now food allergies start to occur. And other symptoms, hold on, it may not be a gut symptom. You could have fatigue, you could have brain fog, weird rashes, thyroid conditions. All of that can be driven by the antibodies that are crossing the gut because of glyphosate. This one chemical, by the way, that's been banned in Europe, banned in Mexico, and banned in most countries, except right here in the United States, opens it up, allows the protein, we form the antibodies. We wouldn't complain of a gut problem. So 50 to 66%, uh, not very accurate because you could have a gut problem without even having a symptom in your gut, but you have fatigue, energy problems, brain fog, anxiety, thyroid condition, which in fact can start in the gut or any autoimmune condition because of one chemical. And that's all I'm I just talked about, that glyphosate chemical that opens up that gut. Now, if this happens chronically and you're eating non-organic food all the time, now your gut can stay open. And we call that aka leaky gut, all right. Meaning things are going across the gut that shouldn't. And I want to re- I want to say this again. You don't necessarily have to have gut symptoms to have that occurring. Did you hear that? So very important. The most famous protein that most people are aware of today is gluten. Now, I asked this question. Before 2006, how many gluten issues did you do you recall or people that had gluten issues? Very few is the correct answer. Back when I was in school, and that was a long time ago, we didn't have anybody that was reacting to gluten. Now, many people might say, well, the gluten changed and the gluten's different in Europe. That's true. It is. However, the problem is more of the chemical glyphosate that opens up the gut barrier and allows this protein to cross over into uh the bloodstream, and then we make the antibodies to it. So I would argue that if we started spraying glyphosate in Europe on all of their crops and grains like we do here, they too would start reacting to their gluten, even though it's a more ancient gluten. So I do believe that that's part of it. They do have a healthier gluten, but I believe the chemical is absolutely the bigger issue. So what happened in 2006? Did you ask yourself that question? Well, I'll tell you what happened. 80 some percent, I think it's 88% of all glyphosate used in history happened after 2006. So that chemical that really has caused all the gluten issues started being used in a it started being used in the 90s for sure, but then in 2000s, 2006, it went like this. So most of the glyphosate used has been after 2006, and that's when we saw the gluten explosion happen. And I just want to remind you that it goes beyond just a gluten sensitivity. Um, autoimmune, and I kind of already brought that up. Autoimmune, weird symptoms like anxiety, brain fog, can't sleep, aches and pains, all that could be because you have leaky gut driven by a chemical. Now, look, uh, am I just blaming it all on glyphosate? I'm not. Uh heavy metal exposures, um, being exposed to a lot of heavy metals, even in utero. Your mother had a lot of mercury, lead, that it goes into the baby in utero. I talk about all of those studies that actually show that, but that can start a leaky gut problem as early as childhood and even infancy, infancy. So, not to mention, I haven't even brought up all the plastic exposures, the forever chemical exposures, which are hormone disruptors. Oh, we have the we lead the world in hormone problems. Oh, by the way, we take more hormones by far than any country in the world, meaning we are into bioidentical hormones for everything. How's that working out? When you go to these other countries, they don't really take hormones. Oh, unless they're actually missing the gland that produces them. And I would argue that is the right time to take the hormone. But is it working out that we're all looking at blood levels of hormones, taking hormones, and expecting our problems to go away? Well, some things might get better for a while, but then you need more of the hormone, right? This is the pattern, isn't it? And then all of a sudden, even that's not working, and you need more and more and more. See, because if we're only so easy, hormones don't work in the blood. So by making the blood levels look more normal, that doesn't work. They have to get in the cell and work, and that is the problem. But I say all that to say that there's so many chemicals that are disrupting hormones, get disrupting our gut, disrupting the way our brain works. Chemicals, the upstream problem. Okay, let me get to some of the things I promised you, right?

When Peptides Help The Gut

Dr Pompa 10:42

First of all, let me start with peptides, because I had so many questions on this. Many of you asked, do peptides work for the gut? Um, I think peptides, especially if you're working to eat all organic diet, getting rid of those chemicals I just mentioned. And by the way, I think that's what you have to do. I think you do have to get rid of seed oils today because they're rancid fats that affect the gut as well and every cell in your body. So start there. Eat all organic and get rid of seed oil. Some of you will say, I can't eat all organic. Okay, eat from the clean 15 and avoid the dirty dozen. At least do that. That's a place to start. If you do that, peptides could actually work. If you don't do that, I would argue it would be a very expensive, short-term, very short solution that will go, yeah, I tried peptides, that didn't work. C, because you didn't cut off the problem upstream, right? If there's a factory dumping mercury in the water, or how about glyphosate, the chemical that I warned you about, or paraquat, 20 miles up the river, and you're down here trying to fix all the plants, the algae, and get the fish repopulated, restocking the river. Uh two months later, everything's dead again. You do it again. Spend more money on all that process. Sound familiar? This is all the stuff that you peptides and probiotics and everything you're spending in your gut, good, you know, other good uh supplements perhaps. Um, and all of a sudden, two months later, it's all dead again. You could do that a third time if you want, but you get the point. Until you get upstream, it's not going to happen. Okay, so if you do that, peptides could be helpful. I I think the two uh there's two that I love for the gut, BPC157, the oral version. And if you go to integrativepeptides uh.com, I you could buy that or find that. It's an oral version of BPC. Oral is better for the gut. Um, injection, sub Q is better for joints, aches, pains, tendinitis, things that need to heal heal. So that's the BPC157. KPV um is a wonderful one for the gut. I think it really does help with inflammation of the gut. So does BPC, but also it helps with some mast cell activation that people are building up the um antibodies in immune cell, the mast cells to certain foods. Um, so it even helps systemically, but it also helps with inflammation in the gut. If I would want to add a third, um, it would be TB500 because it really does work systemically. Uh, it helps healing, and it does, in fact, work very well with BPC, even healing in the gut. So I would argue that that would be good. If someone has autoimmune, you think it's driven from the gut or autoimmune affecting your gut, I would throw in the um uh thymocin alpha one, because that helps regulate immunity, and that could be why you actually have a gut issue. Okay, that's what I like for peptides, keeping it cheap, keeping it simple. I know there's others, but those are the ones that I see that least help if you get upstream and actually get to the cause. If that's the big word there. Okay.

Gut Testing What To Skip

Dr Pompa 13:52

So um the other thing I would I want to ask is many of you are asking always about testing. Should I do this expensive um test that my chiropractor, my doctor, my practitioner, my functional medicine doctor wants me to do? It looks at the microbiome. My answer is typically no, save your money. The reason why is in my doctor training group, we tested a lot of these types of tests. And I can tell you that if you do one today and you do one next week, or even in a couple of days, you'll see a very different test. So that screams that it is, in fact, perhaps inaccurate, but it also could we could say that the microbiome changes that fast. But I will say this it does give one uh thing that is valuable of accuracy, and that is the diversity of the microbiome matters, meaning the more diverse the types of bacteria you have and the numbers of bacteria, diversity is really important, meaning healthier people have more diversity, uh, unhealthy people have a lot less diversity. That is very consistent, whether you did it today, tomorrow, two months from now. And it does give a reflection of something you do need to improve. Here's the problem. You might ask, okay, great. I spend the money on the test, I look at that, and it's telling me I don't have a diverse gut. Then, Dr. Babasha, I just start taking probiotics. If it were only so easy, that's what I would say. If it were only so easy, it's not. I'm not against probiotics. I think many probiotics can be very good for the gut. I teach probiotic rotation, where we take a probiotic for a couple weeks to a month and then we switch. We do soil organisms, we do um uh other uh type of spore organisms, regular probiotics. Um, so we we kind of go from one species to the next uh because they all do different things. So I'm okay with probiotics, but it's not that simple. You can't just take probiotics and expect to all of a sudden create all this diversity. Why? Because there's thousands literally of microorganisms in the gut that make up our microbiome, our um biome, which is our the viruses, the funguses, the I mean, all of that is a lot of pathogens that we haven't even discovered yet, or microorganisms that we haven't discovered yet. So um it's not that simple. We could take uh 14, 18 different probiotics, but there's thousands. I remember them saying one day, you know, there's hundreds of different probiotics. Well, now it's thousands and more thousands, and some we haven't even discovered yet. So uh if it were only so

Diet Variation Builds Microbiome Diversity

Dr Pompa 16:31

simple. That said, I teach a process called diet variation to stress the microbiome and actually add diversity, meaning most people that have gut problems, most Americans, we stick to the same eight foods. That creates a monoculture, meaning that we end up losing diversity of our microbiome. When we switch diets, like every ancient culture in the world was forced to do because of lack of animals, um, environmental changes, droughts, things like that. Well, they were forced to change their diet. Seasons force them to change their diet, but we can eat the same foods year-round because we're that sophisticated. Um, but it really works against us because every time you change your diet, you have a massive change in your microbiome, and other bacteria are allowed to rise up again. For example, uh, an ancient culture in the winter would be very keto diet, maybe even carnivore. And then spring comes, they start eating berries, and then fall comes, they start eating more grains and things in their diet. And so you can see that season um eating actually forces the microbiome to change. But people that do that, it's proven, it's not my opinion, to have much more diverse microbiome. So it's part of the problem also that we're not eating enough diversity in diets. So one of the things I uh teach is diet variation. You know, I'm moving in from keto. Like I am in keto right now. Maybe I'll be doing keto for three months. Before I went to France, I was in keto for two, three months. I was there, I came out of keto, be a little more diverse with my diet. Still ate healthy, by the way, and easier in France, in Italy than it is here. Came back. I brought I still was probably out for a month. Now I'm back in it for the last uh few weeks. So I rotate my diet probably more frequently than most. I am a believer. I interviewed a guy right here on this podcast, uh, find the podcast, John Dillard, Dr. John Dillard. He wrote the three uh three-season diet. And you'd say, well, isn't there four seasons? Well, three-season, you'll hear why, because that's what ancient cultures did. Really, there were three different diets they were um forced into. Um, a very uh very unique way of eating today, but it really does heal the gut. And um, I I'm gonna write the book one day too, Diet Variation, because I do, I think with today, I think we do um benefit. I get bored on diets. So if I'm gonna diet a month or two, I'm I'm looking to switch. I travel a lot. I like to vary my diet, but I can tell you that every test, gut test I've done, I have incredible microbiome diversity. And people are always like, what do you take? What do you do? Uh I don't do anything. I rotate my diet a lot. I'm in keto, I'll even do carnivore. I, you know, I'm changing diets and foods even that I eat often. So very important to do that. Um, another key to changing the um diversity of the microbiome is fasting. Uh, that's part of my diet variation as you go into fast periodically, even five-day fast, whether it be a partial fast or a full water fast, you're gonna have to watch my other podcasts on that. So I've done many on diet variation. I've done many on fasting, and I'm going to do more because y'all uh want to know more. But this is a way to break through weight loss resistance, too, by the way, because when you change diet and you do these fasting strategies that I call feast famine cycling, you actually get something called hormone optimization. It's another way of optimizing your hormones. Some of that comes from because of what that's doing to your gut and the microbiome and the diversity, because you hormonally optimize if you have more diversity. By the way, your brain works better, your immune system works better, the more diverse your gut is. So you can see that I am a big proponent of getting to the cause and then using natural strategies like diet, not just diet in the sense of eat a better diet, but literally changing and variating your diet and utilizing fasting strategies because it's a great stress. And again, if you fast, feast famine cycle, you mean you eat a lot and then you don't eat a lot, um, it is a way to increase the microbiome. Okay, I'm gonna open it up to my team to ask some questions that I know that I've missed that you all asked.

Supplements Prebiotics And SIBO Clues

Dr Pompa 20:54

So give me one.

SPEAKER_01 20:55

You hit a lot of them, but what supplements would you recommend?

Dr Pompa 20:59

Okay, the question was is that what supplements would you recommend? That's a great question. I I kind of already uh tipped my hand on probiotics. I like the soil uh organisms, the um the different spore types of probiotics. And then there's of course more traditional probiotics and rotating them. Um I created a product called gut enhancer. I hate sitting here and like promoting my own product, but I'm telling you, it's a great product. I did an Instagram video of these two guys from Mexico. Um, well, it started with one. He had gut problems for like 15 years. Anyways, I put him on gut enhancer. I came back like, I don't know, it was probably six months later. And I'm like, hey, how's the gut? He's like, yeah, no, I'm fixed. It was like, that was it. I'm like, you're fixed. I he went on the product for two months and it fixed his 15 year old gut issue. Every time I go back, I'm like, how's your gut? He's like, I'm fixed. He had severe heartburn. So with the other guy uh that worked, this was in Cabo, um, that that worked with him. He said, Hey, whenever you Gave Ricky, I want. And so I gave him, I literally gave him a few bottles and sure enough, fixed his gut problems. So I did a video interviewing both of them. So gut enhancer. If you go to my site, I if you go to healthcenters.com, hit shop, it'll bring you to that. Because right now, most of those are practitioner-only products. Okay, enough of tuning my own product. Um, other products that you can get. We talked about peptides. Um, other supplements. Oh, here's one that I think is very undervalued. Um, it is butyic acid, aka butyrate. The company that I like is Body Bio. Butyrate, it all reduces inflammation. It actually is really good for your cells, cell membranes. I use it in my mold protocol, but it also has the short chain fatty acids help act as a healthy prebiotic and it helps your already existing bacteria, which I'm a big fan of. I'm a big fan of prebiotics, meaning things that your own bacteria like to feed from. If you Google that, you'll find a lot of products. But um, microbiome labs has some great prebiotics. And in the spore probiotics, they have as well, um, microbiome labs. And um the uh point that I wanted to make there was the prebiotics. Oh, don't take them if you have SIBO. That's small intestinal bacteria overgrowth, because yes, it will make you worth worse. By the way, many of you that have bloating after meals, you have small intestinal bacteria overgrowth. It's not a food allergy, typically. Uh, here's a way, a way to tell. Better than any breath test, because you might have heard about breath tests for SIBO and other tests, but eat some garlic and onions. How do you feel? Either shortly after, or it could even be hours after, and even later that night, in the middle of the night, if you just feel like you have bloating, uh, that could be SIBO. Or another one, you can go to a health food store and get a product called Inulin. Inulin is a great prebiotic, but if you have SIBO, it it will wreck you. That is the most accurate way of actually assessing if you have small interior, uh small intestinal bacteria overgrowth. What do you do? Oregano oil and neem, N-E-E-M, are the two best natural killers that I know. Um, and I have a whole SIBO protocol. Maybe you could type in here in my chat, reach out to my team. But I'm telling you, those really do work for SIBO. Okay, I'm also a

FMT Mold And Hidden Gut Triggers

Dr Pompa 24:33

fan. I talked about probiotics. I don't want to get myself too deep in trouble here, but I'm a fan of fecal microbial transplants. Yeah, you know what that means? That means you take another human's feces um and ingest it. Okay, I made that sound worse than it is. So you're not just eating poop. Um, you it's it you can buy it encapsulated, freeze-dried, so you don't know you're eating poop. And sometimes they'll they'll actually send it to people uh for enemas. It can be used in an enema, and it can also be taken in um special encapsulated pills that don't uh open up in the gut, but open up further down into the gut. So there's companies I do that um that we would send people to get those freeze-dried pills. And again, reach out perhaps to my team that they can make some of those suggestions for you. But I know that sounded really gross, but it really it's not. It works because why? Why does it work better than taking a probiotic? Because remember I said there's thousands of bacteria in microorganisms we haven't discovered yet? Yes, see, in FMT as it's known, it's in there, right? It's not in the pill. So a big fan for very complicated gut issues with for FMT. Don't waste your money if you haven't got to the upstream causes. And by the way, I didn't even talk about living in mold exposures. That's a whole, I've done many, many uh videos on that. But if you're living in mold, which by the way, team is a really probably good one for me to do, uh, talking about really how to know if you're living in mold, because I don't believe air tests are worthy. It's a waste of your money. But I am a fan of mold dogs. So we'll talk more about that in another episode. Um, but you know, if you get rid of those upstream things, and again, I didn't even talk about silver fillings in people's mouths that that's the mercury, that factory upstream that is leaching mercury all the all day long into the microbiome, killing it. Yeah, don't waste your money on the FMT. Uh so, or if you haven't changed your diet and gotten away from all the glyphosate, don't waste your money. Okay, other products, uh supplements that I think are helpful. Coconut cult, very good. Coconut cult is a yogurt that is not a normal yogurt. If you're going to use it for the therapeutic benefits, get their original um their original product, the plain one, loaded with a unique bacteria. It's start small, start with a teaspoon, go to a tablespoon, quarter bottle, half bottle, full bottle. Okay, so it will load you up uh with some good bacteria. That and you can buy that at Whole Foods and other health food stores um too. So, and and look, I I know that there are some other uh products that I would recommend. Um uh sometimes I look at the liver to look at the gut. Um, there's a product from Systemic Formulas called L liver. Uh so anyways, there there's uh there's a lot to the gut. So I just kind of you know scratch the surface on some of the unique products. Okay, more questions.

First Steps To Heal Leaky Gut

SPEAKER_01 27:37

If you had leaky gut, what is the absolute first thing you would do to start that?

Dr Pompa 27:42

If I had leaky gut, what is the first thing that I would do to um to help that start that healing? Uh well that's easy. I you you probably could you know guess my next words, and that is I would look for my upstream things that are uh that are in my life, right? First thing I would do is get I would go organic, get rid of seed oils. I mean, that's boom, control those two things right away. Then I would start looking at those upstream causative factors. Does my house have mold? Do I have silver fillings um in my mouth? Uh, you know, maybe you have a hidden infection. You go to a biological dentist, get something called a cone beam. Because when you have had wisdom teeth out, it heals over, and those infections, they just run havoc in your oral microbiome that affects your microbiome. So that's what I would do first and foremost. Then you could start into some of the supplements, right? And then maybe peptides. That would be the order. That was a great question. All

Final Takeaways And Share

Dr Pompa 28:42

right. Look, those are your questions. Share this episode. Many people have gut issues, don't know they have gut issues, but let's work with the 66% that know they have gut issues. We just gave some unique answers. That was my goal. I'll see you on the next podcast of the Dr. Pampa podcast. See you on the next show.