Natural Tips to Restore Gut Health

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Let’s dive in. Today, I want to talk about gut health. To start the conversation, I want to talk a little bit about gut function. Because last week, we talked about different problems and different issues but I want to go backward this time. We talked about specific types of complaints and natural elements for that but let’s talk today about gut function. I want to start with a basic conversation about how your gut works and why it’s important for you to understand that so that you have a better understanding of how to apply this information as we go through it.

Number one, our first sense of gastrointestinal function is our actual sense of smell. When you’re at home and maybe mom is cooking dinner in the kitchen or you’re cooking dinner in the kitchen, the very first thing that happen is the aromatization of the food hits your nose. It delivers a message to your brain that something is cooking, whether that’s smell is pleasant or whether it’s displeasant. The first feedback that we get to start the process of telling our brain to help us to digest is through our sense of smell. Smell is a very, very important in critical function because it starts the process of digestion.

Those of you who might be taking blood pressure medications, those of you who might had had years of chronic sinusitis or other allergy problems where your smell is being reduced, that actually can play a role in reducing your brain’s ability to tell your gastrointestinal tract that it’s time to begin its work and begin the process of digestion. Again, the smell itself can be very, very important and very, very powerful. Zinc deficiency can cause a loss of smell, vitamin A deficiency can contribute to that to a certain extent as well, B vitamin deficiency and again multiple medications can affect our ability to smell our food. Smell is the first thing.

The second thing is taste. In taste, there are different forms of taste. Taste is to where our body recognize its food as either potentially good or bad. If you put something in your mouth and it triggers a gag reflex or if you put something in your mouth and it’s hard to swallow as you’re chewing it and it’s creating a problem and your body is saying, get this out of my mouth. The first thing is you want to respect your taste and listen to what your body is trying to tell you. This is especially important in kids who generally are a little bit more intuitive about eating than adults.

Sometimes kids will hate particular foods and it’s not because they’re trying to get out of eating and it’s because they literally don’t like the way it taste because their bodies are telling not to eat it. There’s an intuitive nature to when you’re eating something and you want to always try to pay attention to that intuitive nature about how you feel when you put a food in your mouth whether your body is saying get that food out or not. Taste also like bitter and astringent taste and salty, and sour, and sweet. The different types of taste tells us a little bit something about our food. Again, it’s feedback.

Now, the other thing that begins in the mouth the second the food hits the mouth is our glands in our mouth, our salivary glands, our parotid and mandibular and submandibular glands are secreting chemicals when some of these chemicals aid in the digestion. One of these chemicals in particular is amylase. Now, amylase is a digestive enzyme. It helps to break down our food the second it hits our mouth. That amylase is in our mouth as we’re chewing were actually chemically also chemically breaking down our food. The glands in the mouth are very important in order to help us to begin the process of digestion.

Chewing is also extremely important, the act of chewing. Many people swallow or inhale their foods too quickly, don’t take proper time to chew. What that does is it makes it harder for that food when you do swallow it, it makes it harder for you to digest it, so very, very important that you chew your food thoroughly. Again, these are just comments and tips. At the same time, many people inhale their food. I think I shared it with your last week my adventures in the military where we had to eat our food within five minutes. If we didn’t get it down, we didn’t get to eat that day. I had to retrain myself to eat slowly when I got out of the air force. Chewing is very important.

We have amylase secretion in the mouth which helps us digest our food. We have immune chemicals that we secrete, antibodies that we secrete in our saliva that help our immune system protect us from food. Because sometimes when we eat food, there’s bacteria and then sometimes there are microorganisms in it that aren’t necessarily healthy. Our gut is designed to quarantine that food and to neutralize any particular threat. Once we chew our food and we swallow it, then we have the action of something called peristalsis which is a wavelike contraction of the esophagus that pushes the food down.

Now, what happens to a lot of people especially with autoimmunity is their immune system has been ramped up for so long and their bodies have started to deteriorate. They’ve actually started to lose their muscle mass because their immune system is stealing muscle to make antibodies. Basically, it’s taking the protein from the muscle and redistributing that protein to help defend the body through the immune system through the production of more antibodies. What happens to the esophagus? Remember, it’s a muscle so it’s designed to contract and relax so that it pushes food down.

Many people actually have esophageal atrophy or esophageal spasm. This can happen for many reasons. One is chronic autoimmunity can create a protein malnourishment effect which leads to the atrophy of the muscle around the esophagus. One of the other is that, for example, calcium deficiency or magnesium deficiency can cause spasms in the esophagus leading to food getting stuck in the throat, making it harder for that food to be able to push down into the stomach where more digestion can be begin. Once we get to the stomach, the stomach’s pH is around 2.0. It’s a very, very acidic PH.

Its primary job is to help you start breaking down protein through digesting that protein and breaking down animal meats as well as breaking down plant-based protein. Most of our protein digestion occurs in the stomach where we start and begin the process of breaking down amino acids from larger proteins through the acid of stomach action, through the acid of something called pepsin which is a cleavage enzyme to break down protein but also through the churning effect, the mechanical effect of digestion because a lot of our digestion is mechanical.

That mechanical digestion starts with the teeth and the peristalsis and the GI tract, it’s more churning and it’s more pushing and pulling. Then we get in the stomach, that same type of churning is occurring as well. We have chemical as well as mechanical digestion that occurs. Then once it passes from our stomach, there’s a hormone that’s secreted that tells our pancreas to make something called bicarbonate which neutralizes stomach acid. When that acid content of the stomach dumps into your small intestine so do your pancreas secretes something called bicarbonate that neutralizes the acid so it doesn’t burn a hole in your intestines.

That has to be working and it has to be operational or you’re going to end up with pH imbalance within the GI tract and increase our risk for diseases like cancer in the stomach and cancer in the upper duodenum. Now, I talked last week about how some of the medications affected the different areas of the gut. You might want to go back and review our video from last week so you have a good understanding of some of those medicines and how they can impact again the digestive capacity of your GI tract.

Once that food is in your small intestine, remember your small intestine is about 22 feet long. We’ve got a lot of folds and a lot of bends and it has cilia and microcilia in it which increase the surface area. The surface area of your small intestine is about the size of a tennis court. That’s quite large when you consider how tightly compacted it is within your abdominal cavities. The surface area of your small intestine is large for a reason. The design of your gut is to basically have an increase surface area so that you can absorb more nutrients more efficiently from the food that you’re eating.

That surface area is also important because that’s how … part of the cells that are in the small intestine secrete digestive enzymes to help you break down the food that you’re eating. There’s this 22-foot journey where you’re slowly breaking this food down, you’re slowly absorbing it into your GI tract cells where it can then go to something called the portal circulation before it hits your main circulation. It goes to the liver so that the liver can do its magic of detoxification and basically anything that potentially is harmful that does get through your liver can try to help take care of that before your food nutrients go into your general systemic circulation.

All those things have to happen. Here, we’re still in the small intestine, once we get to pass the small intestine into the large intestine, this is the function where the large intestine is where a lot of your bacteria live. It’s where a lot of digestion continues to occur. It’s also where we regulate our water balance. Within our GI tract and our large intestine, we’re regulating water and we’re preparing to excrete waste. Very important functions, a lot of our short chain fatty acids were also made in our large intestine through bacterial fermentation action on fiber.

This is why when you hear somebody say you need to eat more fiber to increase your bowel movement function, that’s because fiber, your good healthy microbiome bacteria convert your fiber into fuel for your colon so that your colon can help to push your feces out so that you can have a regular, normal, healthy bowel movement. Again, from mouth all the way down to large intestine, rectum, all these different functions are going on. They’re all part of or connected to what’s called your parasympathetic nervous systems.

Much of your digestion is under the control of the side of your nervous system that works best when you’re calm and you’re relaxed and you’re at peace and you’re not stressing out and you’re not running around trying to exercise or do other things. Again, I reviewed a lot of that last week, go back and watch that video so that you can understand it deeper because I just want try and not be quite so repetitive from last week to this week. Make sure again, you go back and watch the video from last week and you could check that out on our YouTube channel like glutenology or you can check it out on Dr. Peter Osborne Facebook fan page where we post these replays.

That’s the general synopsis from mouth to butt hole what happens within your gut. Now, I want to talk before I get into the questions and answers. I want to talk a little bit too about the accessory organs of the GI tract, meaning these are the organs that help to accessorize your guts function. What I mean by accessorize is that, without these organs, a lot of our digestion could not occur, a lot of our hormone regulation could not occur. One of those organs is your liver. Your liver produces a substance called bile. Then there’s a little tiny gland on your liver called the gallbladder where that bile is then stored and then secreted into the small intestine for what’s called the common bile duct.

Now, the bile’s job, there’s a couple of different jobs for bile. One is that it emulsifies fats. Emulsification is the process where it takes things that are fat and it turns them into water soluble items so that it they can be absorbed. This is how we absorb fat. If you’ve had a past history where your gallbladder has been removed and you’re still making bile but your gallbladder is gone so you’re just not adept at secreting that bile into your small intestine to help you absorb fat. One of the things that your surgeon or your followup doctor should have talked to you about is that, with no gallbladder, you’re at long-term risk for fat malabsorption for the rest of your life.

There are some strategies and some things that you can do supplementally that can help to help to support your digestion in the absence of a gallbladder. One of those things it can be done is taking a battery or an array of digestive enzymes that help focus to digest and break down fat. One of the other things you can do is you could take … there’s a substance called ox bile which is a bile substitute that you can also take that helps to again emulsify fats so that you can absorb it. There are some supplements that people with no gallbladders might consider using as support for normal digestion in the absence of that organ. The liver and the gallbladder are very important.

Now, bile is also very important for detoxification. A lot of the toxins that come through our food, those toxins are bile can bind to so that we can poop them out. The bile is important as an agent for binding onto toxins. The bile is important as an agent to help us break down our fats and to help us absorb our fats. Again, if you’ve got liver disease or if you’ve got a missing gallbladder from a surgery that maybe you had done, these are things that you want to consider because this is going to definitely impact your ability to digest and absorb fat.

One of the other accessory organs to the gut is your pancreas. Now, your pancreas has two primary functions. It has what’s called an exocrine function and an endocrine function. What does that really mean? The exocrine function of the pancreas means it’s the function where your pancreas secretes digestive enzymes and H2CO3 bicarbonate into your small intestine. Your pancreas neutralizes stomach acid as I mentioned before. Your pancreas also secretes amylase and lipase and the lactase. These are digestive enzymes that help you break down your food so that you can absorb it.

Again, one of the jobs of the pancreas is to secrete the enzymes that aid in food digestion which your gut produces digestive enzymes as well. Without the pancreas, people can really get into big trouble. That’s why when people start to have problems with pancreatitis where their pancreas becomes inflamed and they’re not producing adequate quantities of amylase or lipase that can get into your gut and help into your digestion, a lot of these people, one of the first symptoms they have is severe gut problems, severe gut pain. This can be a very life threatening type of emergency. Acute pancreatitis can be quite life threatening. It’s not something we ever would wish on anyone.

Support of the pancreas oftentimes includes digestive enzymes as well. Some people have a pancreatic insufficiency, meaning the organ is just tired because they’ve over utilized it and that can’t meet the demand of the food that’s being put into the GI tract. Remember, your GI tract needs rest too. As we talked about in the last several episodes, in one point, we talked about fasting but we also talked about intermittent fasting so like not eating or reducing the capacity of eating so that you give your organs rest including your GI tract but also including your pancreas.

Your pancreas is very important as an accessory organ because it helps to excrete digestive enzymes and acid neutralizing substances to help the digestive process along. Now, one of the other functions of your pancreas is that it secretes insulin. Now, insulin doesn’t help you digest your food but insulin helps you regulate your blood sugar which has an impact on your brain’s satiety. When we’re not getting adequate sugar from our blood into ourselves to make energy, our brain registers that as we’re still hungry so the hunger mechanism never turns off or is not turning off properly.

The pancreas, one of it’s other functions again is in the regulation of blood sugar control which helps to control our appetite so very, very important to have healthy blood sugar, so that we’re controlling our appetite, so that we’re not overeating through food craving. Because a lot of people continue to have food craving and continue to feel unsatisfied, because they’re not making energy because they can’t get the sugar that they’re breaking down from their food into their selves to generate energy. The liver had its endocrine function is in the production of that insulin.

Those two organs, the pancreas and the liver along with the gallbladder, accessory organs of the GI tract, very, very critical for normal function. If you’re struggling with pancreatic inflammation or if you’re struggling with some form of liver and gallbladder disease, these are going to impact your digestion in a big way. You want to know that so that you can support those organs to function properly. Now that we’ve gotten the basics out of the way, let’s dive into the questions as they’re coming in.

It’s a little off topic but what is it that since my pregnancy, I’m allergic to mosquitoes. This is quite off topic but it’s a good question. Before, I never got bit but now just walking through my yard, I get bad swollen bites, is something in my blood different? I hate having to be so cautious outside and I don’t like all of these bites. Is there anything I can do to fix this? Have you even heard of this? Yes. One of the biggest problems women have after pregnancy is widespread malnutrition. That’s because as you’re growing a baby inside of you, that baby is a little parasite. I say that in a kind way, that is taking nutrients for mom in order to grow and sustain greater growth as gestation is occurring.

The baby is really taking the nutrients for mom. When the baby is born, where that leaves mom is oftentimes in a state of severe nutritional deficiency depending on the mom’s diet during pregnancy, depending on whether the mom was supplementing during pregnancy. Some of the worst cases I’ve seen in my clinic are postpartum women coming in, we check their nutritional status. One time, I saw a woman with 28 out of 40 nutritional deficiencies and we had to supplement her. We had to get the nutrients back into her. Now, going back to the question here which is why do mosquitoes bite you now versus they maybe didn’t bite you before.

One of the things that happen is vitamin B1 deficiency. Vitamin B1, also known as thiamine, this particular vitamin is mosquito protective, meaning if you deficient in this vitamin, you will be more appetizing to mosquitoes. Actually, if you are vitamin B1 deficient, mosquitoes will have a greater tendency toward biting you. One of the things you might look at is, have your doctor checked to see whether or not you’re a vitamin B1 deficient? You might look at also just supplementing with higher doses of vitamin B1. Vitamin B1 again is also called thiamine. What I like is, I like something called Ultra B1 and you can find that on glutenfreesociety.org.

Ultra B1 has a battery of different B vitamins but it’s higher in vitamin B1. It’s high in a type of vitamin B1 that’s easier for the human body to absorb because obviously, there are different forms of B1 that some are better absorbed than others. Ultra B1 is one of my favorite formulations if we’re talking about vitamin B1. All right, good question. Next question, yeast and the gut, the more I take supplements for yeast, the worse it becomes when I have yeast die off too fast that gets worse, how do you kill the yeast without multiplying it?

That’s a big question because yeast in the gut, I’m going to assume Sherrie that you’ve actually had somebody test that. Because if you’re haven’t had somebody test that, it may not be yeast at all. I’ve seen cases where people thought they had yeast overgrowth but actually didn’t, it was bacteria. Bacterial overgrowth and yeast overgrowth can sometimes mimic each other. I’ve seen more parasites can mimic the same symptoms as well. I’ve seen people who thought they had yeast that didn’t have yeast, didn’t have bad bacteria but they were eating foods they were allergic to and particularly in the case of gluten sensitivity.

Gluten can cause almost identical symptoms of yeast overgrowth. First and foremost would be the fundamental question of, is it really truly a yeast overgrowth? Secondly, if you’re taking supplements and it becomes worse and that’s why I might think that because if it becomes worse, sometimes it’s possible that getting worse is part of the process when you’re killing off yeast. There’s a die-off process called Herxheimer response where you do feel worse before you feel better. This is not uncommon. It can create a battery of different kinds of symptoms. It can create mood swings. It can create irritability. It can create depression. It can create gastric bloating. It can create diarrhea

It can create a number of different types of symptoms and that generally can last for up to a month. Again, that’s why it’s important to see what it is like what is the problem within the GI tract before just taking something to potentially knock it out. The other thing is this, maybe even if it isn’t yeast and you’re taking an antifungal, even a natural one, remember this have antibacterial properties as well. If you got a history of antibiotics in your past and you’re taking even an antifungal, you could be slowing down the growth of healthy bacteria in your gut with some of those things like oregano and Caprylic acid.

Of course, there are a number of different natural agents that are used oftentimes to go after a yeast overgrowth, oregano, thyme, [inaudible 00:22:24] These have an antibiotic properties as well and if your good bacterial counts are low in your gut, sometimes these supplements can create an even lower status which can make a person symptomatic. It would be something to think about along that line. Now, one of the things that if it’s truly a yeast die-off that you’re struggling with, a couple of different things that can be done.

One is to take a good activated charcoal and that activated charcoal can help as a binding agent in your GI tract to help reduce some of the symptoms that a Herxheimer yeast die-off response. Then the other thing that you can do is make sure you’re on a quite strong probiotic, I would recommend at least 200 billion with a B counting forming units of a strong probiotic again if we’re talking about yeast overgrowth. Because one of the biggest reasons why we would have a yeast overgrowth is that we don’t have adequate microbiome bacteria to prevent the yeast from growing out of control, so good question.

Okay. Can you please talk about hiatal hernia and GERD? Yeah. Let’s talk about hiatal hernia. Hiatal hernia and gastroesophageal reflux … hiatal hernia is actually a physical problem in the GI tracts where you have a herniation. Acid can reflux up into the esophagus and even up into the mouth. A lot of times when people have this, they’ll have a metallic taste in their mouth after eating. It will burn in the chest. A hiatal hernia oftentimes and if you have a good chiropractor, I would recommend talking with them about the potential for doing a physical manipulative maneuver to help with that hiatal hernia.

Many chiropractors are trained in that methodology. They’re probably of all people trained to manipulate the abdominal tissue. Chiropractors probably best well-trained in that so that might be something that you want to do. I’ve seen cases where hiatal hernia was caused by inflammatory damage. It wasn’t the hernia that was the problem. It was the hernia that was the symptom, meaning the hernia tended to heal and go away once we took away foods that were creating the inflammatory response to that area of the GI tract and damaging thus creating the hernia. Remember, the gut can heal.

Generally, it’s one of the fastest healers in the body. It can heal the cell turnover time and just in the small intestine alone is two to seven days. Generally, it will respond to changes in diet. It will respond relatively fast in many cases. Barrett’s esophagus and heartburn. Let’s talk about silent heartburn, Barrett’s esophagus. If you’ve got ever had a scope done and they told you that your esophagus was inflamed but you don’t feel you don’t have symptoms but the scope shows that it’s inflamed, then probably the likelihood is that you’re eating food you’re allergic to and the damage is occurring to your stomach and esophagus.

I’ve seen this a number of times where people come in with Barrett’s esophagus in their history. When they do a followup with their GI doctor after changing diet and getting things dialled in, there’s no more inflammation. They can’t find it on the scope so it goes away. Now, that again, food is a very, very big potential there but so is there’s a type of bacterial infection called Helicobacter pylori or H. pylori that has been shown to be linked to Barrett’s esophagitis and stomach cancer and esophageal cancer. It would be smart if you’re struggling with that type of thing to have H. pylori. There’s a couple of different kinds of tests that can be done.

You can do a breath test where the doctor will have you drink something and then measure gas coming out of your breath. Then there’s also antibody test that it can be done to help recognize H. pylori. Then there’s additionally, there are what are called MALDI-TOP probes that can be used to help identify H. pylori as well and then a biopsy. Sometimes the upper GI where the gastroenterologist goes in and they do a biopsy of the stomach and they find H. pylori damage within the stomach with that biopsy. These are all possibilities of how to get an accurate diagnosis to see whether or not H. pylori is creating your silent heartburn or your Barrett’s esophagus.

Okay. Going on, my father died from throat cancer in relation to GERD. I eat an [apple 00:26:43.1] diet that helps avoid irritation of the esophagus. Dr. Kaufmann and Dr. Aviv both have books that have helped to great deal if I eat something acidic, I know right away as my throat reacts. I eat AIP for autoimmune disease. Then on top of that, I have to be careful of the acidity. I have to be so careful with my food but just so grateful to be able to know what foods can help me? Okay. Well, so now a question in that part, what I might suggest, oftentimes where if you’ve already gone on a really rigid and really strict diet and you feel better because you stay on that diet like an AIP, an Autoimmunue Paleo protocol.

One of the things that might be happening is you might have damage to the mucous lining of your esophagus and your stomach. Some things that can help with that naturally, that just can naturally support recovery of the GI tract, one of the biggest things that can help without recovery is fasting. Again, go back and review our past episode on fasting and intermittent fasting. It can be a very variable tool there. Another thing that can be helpful is aloe vera, natural aloe vera juice. Aloe vera coats lines the GI tracts. If there’s any kind of ulceration or damage, it can help support healing process within the GI tract for that.

L-glutamine is also can be very helpful and very effective. The reason why is the fuel source for the intestinal cells is L-glutamine. For them to repair and heal and recover and reproduce a new mucosal lining, L-glutamine is one of their fuel sources to be able to do that. Other people will use for coating of the GI tract while it’s trying to heal. Things like marshmallow root and deglycyrrhizinated licorice can be helpful. Zinc carnosine can be helpful. These are all kind of nutrients that can be quite helpful for that process. One of my favorite on this is a product called GI Shield.

GI Shield has a lot of those different things so that when you drink it, it’s actually a powder that you mix in water and you drink it. It actually helps create a coating in your esophagus, your stomach, your intestines. If you have any ulceration, what’s that doing is just helping coat those areas so that they’re less irritated by food. Because again, sometimes you eat food and the food irritates the lining. Once the lining is eroded, that’s called an ulceration. It doesn’t matter what you eat, any food can create irritation. Taking something that can coat that ulceration is sometimes very helpful.

That’s why products like Pepto-Bismol and Maalox and those kinds of products exist because they create a coating. I like GI Shield because you’re not doing harm to yourself while you’re creating that coating. Again, if you have that, any food can become an irritant. That’s why fasting can help because it gives you prolonged periods of break that allow those cells to start healing and making a new mucosal lining so that you’re not quite so sensitive to foods. Because at the end of the day, you shouldn’t have to have a super restrictive diet if your GI tract is actually healing although you do want to restrict foods that actually your body reacts to.

Avoiding allergens and avoiding sensitivity is smart but some people become so restrictive not because they need to forever but because they need to on the short-term because certain foods might irritate an already damaged gut. If you’ve got an ulceration and you’re eating hot peppers for example, it’s going to irritate that. It’s going to cause a greater degree of irritation not because you have an allergy to the food but because you have an ulceration which is sensitive to pretty much anything but particularly sensitive to things that are spicy.

Okay. Let’s see here. Stomach ulcer, my doctor says I consume too much acidic food that’s resulted in ulcer. I did not consume acidic foods, no fries, no GMOs, no gluten, et cetera. I think it’s indigestion that created the ulcer. Yeah, so good question Nat. The ulcers themselves are typically again not caused by acidic foods. There are a lot of foods that are very healthy for us that have acidic properties or acidic nature. Acid in and of itself is not evil or bad. It’s imbalance that creates the issue. A lot of people are eating foods that are damaging to the GI tract. It’s in that damage that now acidic foods tend to irritate.

It’s not that acidic foods are bad because remember, your stomach produces a mucosal lining that protects it from acid. Remember, you pH in your stomach is 2.0 from … actually, it’s between 2.0 and 4.5 which is extremely acidic. If you were to pour an acid with a pH of 2 on your tabletop, it would eat a hole in it. Your stomach has a natural mucosal layer protecting you from acid. None of your foods are going to be as acidic as the stomach acid you produce. Acidic foods don’t typically cause the ulcer. They just irritate it once it’s been caused. If there’s an ulcer present again, it goes back to finding out where did it come from and why is it there.

For many people, it’s not acidic foods but it’s foods that cause an immune response that lead to an inflammatory damage that erodes the mucosal lining. It’s not necessarily acidic foods but it’s foods that people can be allergic to. Again, there are seven different ways people can have an allergic response to food. It’s important to have all seven measured so that you can get an accurate assessment of what foods could be potentiating something like that. Again, H. pylori is one of the … it was noble prize winning reason why we understand what can cause an ulcer is H. pylori bacteria for many people can create this type of bacteria.

It can actually bore a hole through the mucosal lining and create an opening and create an irritation that can go on and check and over time lead to ulcers and increase risk for cancers. Again, the proper assessment from the doc in terms of ruling out an H. pylori. I’ve seen patients with massive yeast overgrowth where their stomach pH is hugely varied and abnormal and it supports a massive yeast overgrowth which can also mimic or create this type of problem. There are a number of different reasons why I’d say getting an accurate assessment would be step one in trying to determine that.

Now, one of the other big inducers of ulceration probably one of the most common is aspirin or ibuprofen. These over-the-counter pain medications when taken for pain over time, if they’re taken long enough and they’re taken consistently enough, they are both known to cause ulceration. That’s why the labels says, this product take with food. This product can cause gastric bleeding and ulceration. It’s very, very blatantly clear on the warning label of those products. Really, it’s quite such a problem that I think many people have damage to their mucosal lining as a result of trying to block pain by using these nonsteroidal based antiinflammatory drugs, very, very big problem.

If you’re following the news here lately, there was just a national emergency declared for opiates and narcotics as being a major addiction problem in the United States because of chronic pain. Again, that’s a big reason why I wrote the book, No Grain, No Pain. There are a hundred million people that suffer with some form of chronic pain and nobody is looking at food and nobody is looking at the drugs used to treat pain and how those drugs in fact affect the GI function. If nonsteroidal antiinflammatories are the primary over-the-counter method of which people self-treat their pain and those drugs over time can actually eat a hole in your stomach and eat a hole in the mucosal lining of your small intestine, then it’s going to set you up for a major, major problem down the road.

Even beyond that like the narcotics for pain that the opiates, the Tramadol and some of the other really high powered drugs, they shutdown the gut, that’s one of the side effects is constipation. They shutdown the peristaltic motility of the gut and they lead to massive constipation which can lead to a lot of different types of problems within the GI tract. Again, going back to the question on ulcer, I would first yet a doctor can do a comprehensive workup to try to assess what foods you’re allergic to whether or not you have an infection in your stomach or your GI tract that could be potentiating that or what your history of medication uses that could also be potentiating that destruction or erosion of the mucosal lining.

Okay. Next one, constipation along with a somewhat painful bowel movement. The end result leaves my bowel movement with white specs within it, some very small and some sized thumbnails. What is this in my BM? What’s causing it and what’s the remedy? There are no other side effects, no nausea, no pain elsewhere, please offer some guidance. Yeah, I’ve actually seen this a number of times. It can be several different things, white specs in the stool oftentimes are there when there’s a chronic inflammatory process within the bowel depending on exactly what they look like.

Sometimes white discoloration in the stool can be yeast colonies and all that can be clarified through microscopic evaluation of the poop. Have your doctor run a microscopic evaluation of your stool and get an identifier for what those things are, that would be the first step. Again, identifying because part of it is identifying what it is and allows you to better take action on what to do about it. Let’s just say it is a yeast overgrowth, heavy, heavy doses of probiotics, 200 billion minimum a day of a probiotic to help suppress yeast overgrowth and support GI function. You’d probably want to look at some antifungals whether they’d be over-the-counter or whether they’d be natural agents.

I prefer natural agents, things like oregano and [inaudible 00:37:07] and thyme and berberine and caprylic acid. These are some of the most effective types and can be quite helpful. Oftentimes, people with these types of issues have low stomach acid production. Taking an enzyme to help digestion but taking something like a betaine hydrochloride which is an extra source of acid from the stomach to recover. Because oftentimes in these scenarios, the stomach acid is not strong enough so it’s allowing yeast overgrowth to get down when you eat your food, you’re eating mold and yeast. It’s just part of it. I mean, that’s pretty standard. We all get exposure to that on a daily basis.

It’s not whether we get exposure, it’s whether or not our stomachs have the ability to neutralize these live forms with the high level of acid in the stomach. If your stomach acid levels are low, it predisposes you to big problems, lower down on your GI tract like yeast overgrowth. Stomach acid being low can sometimes be the problem. Using something … I like a product called Ultra Acid which is a mixture of different things. One of the main ingredients is betaine hydrochloride and taking anywhere from two to eight of these before meal can be extremely effective at one, aiding indigestion but two, helping support stomach and its ability to help to prevent the wrong kinds of micro bugs from getting further down into your intestine. Now, if you’ve got an ulcer, don’t use something like a betaine hydrochloride or Ultra Acid product because it can irritate it. Remember, it is a source of acid. If you’ve got a diagnosed ulcer, that probably wouldn’t be the best thing for you to do so be careful there.

All right. Hi, Nancy, you’re welcome. She says, “Thank you, Dr. Osborne for all you do from New York.” You’re welcome, Nancy. Good hearing from you. All righty, let’s see here. Kimberly is just chiming for Ryan. I just put her post up here quickly. Ryan, it sounds like gallbladder and possibly pancreas, go see your doctor for further testing. Not bad advice. I thought it’s always a good idea if you don’t know what it is to at least start with some type of testing to get an accurate assessment for what something is and that way you know how to move forward at least structurally or intelligently without just guessing.

Because a lot of people just guess out and if it’s a big problem or bad enough problem, then you guess for too long, you can end up with a much worse problem if you don’t get it taken care of. Okay, good question coming in from Anita. Hi, any tips for someone with lymphocytic colitis besides steroids? Have been since … let’s see here. Been years since bowel movement or since solid bowel movement, also have diagnosis of esophageal spasms, elevated liver enzymes and insulin resistants. Yeah. The first thing I would tell you to do is go read No Grain, No Pain and follow chapter seven and eight.

If you’re working with doctors already and that’s your diagnosis and steroids has been the answer, one of the most common causes of lymphocytic colitis … and what that means is that means, lymphocytes which is a type of white blood cell are infiltrating the colon creating inflammatory damage waiting to damage to the colon and that causes a lot of diarrhea and loose bowel. Easy thing that can be done is a strong probiotic. The one I would recommend in this case, you can’t use … I don’t recommend some of the over-the-counter stuff that you would pick up like at a local drug store because, one, many of them are grown in corn.

With lymphocytic colitis, you don’t want to touch anything corn or GMO corn because it can be a trigger. It’s one of the most well studied triggers for that from a food perspective. I would recommend Ultra Biotic Defense and these come in little package, pour them in water and you drink them. You drink one at night time before you go to bed. It will give you over 200 billion colony forming units of very hearty species of lacto and bifidobacteria. Oftentimes, with lymphocytic colitis, there’s a huge microbiome disruption and that can be quite helpful to stabilize the bowel movements.

I’ve seen a number of patients with that type of problem when we get them on a probiotic, we’re seeing that their diarrhea is clearing up relatively quickly. That’s one thing you might try that’s relatively inexpensive and quite safe even if it’s not necessary. The other thing here is gluten. I mean, gluten, gluten, and gluten. Lymphocytic colitis, we have direct studies that show gluten as a causative agent in lymphocytic colitis. You’ve got to get gluten free but even more specifically, you got to get grain free which is why I recommend that you read No Grain, No Pain and follow chapter seven and eight diet protocol immediately as a mechanism to at least begin the process.

Now, other things you can do, have your doctor test you for delayed food allergies. You can have your doctor run a stool culture on you where you’re looking for other types of infectious microorganisms because sometimes lymphocytic colitis can also be an infection. You can have different kinds of bacterial overgrowths in your GI tract that can contribute to it. If your liver enzymes are elevated and you’re insulin resistant, lot of questions come up in my mind there. Are you exercising? Are you insulin resistant because you’re sedentary? Are you insulin resistant because your diet is high in sugar? If it’s not high in sugars, is it high in things that convert sugar very easily?

That creates an insulin resistance or it creates a platform for diabetes. Are deficient in any particular nutrients? Esophageal spasms are super common when you’re eating foods you’re allergic to but there are also really common. I see it quite often with magnesium deficiency. That might be something else that’s going on and also magnesium deficiency because it’s linked to insulin resistance. You might, it could very potentially be both of those things. You just don’t know without adequate testing to see. Otherwise, we’re just throwing guess work at it. Those are the things that I would have your doctor look into and in the immediate.

Let’s see here, next question. Liver function and load to high histamine foods when a person … okay. Not quite sure I understand this question but I’m going to answer it the way I am interpreting it. Liver dysfunction doesn’t necessarily cause a problem with histamine. Generally, where we all see people who are histamine food … histamine is a chemical that’s produced by white blood cells but it’s also histamines can be naturally found in certain foods, higher in some foods than in others.

A person who is chronically inflamed and already over producing histamine, when they eat histamine based foods, it can cause even greater irritation leading to itchy skin, leading to breakout and rashes, leading to gastrointestinal problems. If you’ve ever taken an antihistamine like an over-the-counter Bendaryl or some of these other medications, that’s the whole premises that blocking histamine reduces those types of symptoms. Again, blocking histamine doesn’t necessarily fix why the histamine levels are high.

Usually, your histamine levels are high because your white blood cells are perceiving some kind of threat and they’re using histamine as a weapon to defend you from the threat. Blocking your own histamine neutralizes your body’s ability to defend you from the threat that you’re facing and at the same time prevents you from having symptoms. Also, in my opinion, creates a false sense of security because you’re not actually addressing or dealing with the origin of the problem. Again, this is my interpretation of the question because the question is not super clear to me.

When a person is a battling liver issues in connection with allergies or multiple chemical sensitivity, so … okay, got you. I think I get it. If you’re chronically ill and you’re battling all kinds of allergies and chemical sensitivities and you’re eating foods that are high in histamine and part of the way your battling is producing histamine to try to help you fight the battle, then you can actually irritate the situation. What happens for some people is they actually benefit from a low histamine diet in the short interim, in the short term. I’ve never seen a person to have to go completely histamine diet indefinitely.

I have seen patients where we had to change them to a low-histamine diet for a period of time while we were trying to take away the foods and the chemicals in their environment that were creating the hyper-responsive immune cell reactions and causing an excessive release of histamine. Hopefully, that answers your question. Now, one of the things that you can do that won’t suppress your immune system but it helps to stabilize your immune cells and reduce the symptoms of a hyper histamine issue, again, without suppressing your immune system’s ability to fight is you can take high doses of vitamin C up to 5 grams quite easily.

You can take quercetin in the form of quercetin dehydrate. You can use things like Bromelain and Inositol Cysteine. What these agents do, they support the mass cell. The mass cells are the types of immune cells that release histamine. They support the membrane around the mass cells so that they’re not just blowing up every time something happens. For many people, that can be quite effective. What I would recommend, we have something in our arsenal called Alores and it has a combination of all of those things.

Where this works really, really well is you’ve got somebody with super, super high levels of histamine and they’re really, really struggling or if you’ve got somebody even with environmental allergens and it’s fall or spring and they’re really trying to battle environmental allergens but they don’t want to take an immune suppressing drugs like a Benadryl. This is something that can work quite well in those situations and be very effective. Razi Berry hi. Thanks for joining us today. For those of you who don’t know Razi, you should go and check her out on Facebook. She is a super, super smart woman who has a really nice following, a really great following and she teaches naturopathic principles. She helps naturopathic doctors get educated and stay educated about the science of how naturopathy works. You can go and check her out. Thanks for joining us today.

Could I please talk about HDL supplements and what is the correct way of use? Yeah. HDL, hydrochloric acid supplements also sometimes refer to as betaine hydrochloride. These are best used, one, if you’ve already ruled out ulcers. Make sure you don’t have an ulcer. Don’t just use them if you have a stomach ulcer. This can make it worse and that can create a big problem for you. If you have an ulcer, key note, no use with ulcers. If you don’t have an ulcer and you suspect low stomach acid, the best way to really start using this is to start with a low-dose. You take it about 10 to 15 minutes before the meal.

What you’re looking for is you’re looking for a warm sensation around your abdomen and stomach. If you take it 15 minutes before your meal, you don’t feel anything at all. The next time before you eat, take it again but double the dose. As an example, if you took 100 milligrams, next time, take 200. You keep just stair stepping the dose up until you get to that warm sensation. Once you feel that warm sensation, you’re going to back the dose off a little bit so that that warm sensation is not there and you’re going to use that, that is going to be your medium dose there for taking before meal.

Now, one of the things with hydrochloric acid is that if you’re eating a piece of fresh fruit, seasonal, availability or a fresh local fruit, probably don’t need a hydrochloric acid. Because a lot of the fresh fruit locally grown stuff that’s fresh and not necessarily gassed to prevent it from ripening but it’s fresh and the enzymes is in it are very active, it will help digest itself. You wouldn’t need something maybe like for peach during peach season. Let’s say you wanted to have a piece of chicken or piece of fish or a piece of red meat or lamb. These proteins can be a little bit harder to digest so were hydrochloric acid or betaine hydrochloric can be very helpful as in helping in aiding the digestion of meat. Let’s just say you’re going to eat a steak, that’s a six-ounce steak, this is where you might really have or show a benefit with a hydrochloric acid supplement. In a nutshell, that’s how I would recommend that you look at taking those.

Next question. Organic palm oil and peppermint essential oil … just not a question but a comment. Talking about earlier, I think the question was, after pregnancy, mosquitoes started biting me so here you go. Organic palm oil and peppermint essential oil, good for mosquito repellent, actually citronella is another one that’s really good as a mosquito repellent as well. Yeah, essential oils can be used but I find that high dose vitamin B1 works better than anything else. When I go out into the woods and especially when the mosquito season is here after a lot of the rain, I don’t even get touched. They don’t even bite me. They don’t even come near me. One of the reasons why is a multivitamin I use is high in vitamin B1. My B1 levels are always in a good range.

Let’s see here. Paul, Dr. Osborne for the last year or so, we have four different urine tests done and always coming up with my pH the eight rating. It is good to be alkalinized but does the fact of drinking a lemon with some water in the morning along with half teaspoon sodium bicarbonate could that be causing that? Yeah, absolutely. It could be causing that. I’m not a big fan of trying to neutralize your pH to such a big degree with a bunch of exogenous things that you wouldn’t typically eat. Like taking sodium bicarbonate, would not be advised that I would typically give somebody.

If we were looking at trying to help them and it’s not that it can’t be effective, it’s that the bigger question is, what are they eating that’s making their pH acidic in the first place? If we change their diet, we can change the pH without having to neutralize their guts every time with sodium bicarbonate. Remember, every time you dump sodium bicarbonate into your stomach, you’re neutralizing a lot of the acid that it produces. You can actually be doing more harm than good. It’s not something I would recommend for people on a regular daily basis. Kimberly is chiming in. Not palm oil. She meant coconut oil, again, talking about the mosquito repellent.

Sabrina is asking, when I get around chemicals, strong perfumes, chlorine, new furniture, my stomach starts to hurt. Yeah, that can be quite common. This is a multiple chemical sensitivity issue. What you’ve got to do, one is try to avoid as many chemical exposures as you can. When you go to the mall and they’re piping in all those chemical artificial odors or if you ever travel and you get in like an UBER ride or a taxi cab and they got those chemical air fresheners in the car, try to avoid as much as that as you possibly can. Go through your home. If you’re using any of those kinds of things, obviously, get rid of them.

Because what happens if they’re in your home, sometimes you become accustomed to the smell and you forget about it. You forget you have this thing plugged in over here, this thing plugged over here. Your nose just accommodates the smell of your home. You no longer recognize the chemicals. They can continue to be a problem. No artificial chemical cleaners. No artificial chemical air freshener is what I would recommend. The other thing that I would recommend is make sure you’re filtering your air and get a good HEPA air filter for your home.

Make sure you’re cracking the windows in your home because the seals on the doors and windows in today’s homes are much tighter than they’ve ever been. The EPA estimates that indoor air is 200% to 400% more toxic than external outside air. That can be a big problem for some people especially with multiple chemical sensitivities. The other thing that I would suggest in this case, if your stomach and you’re really reacting to chemical exposures, we have to protect the stomach because it’s how we’re going to absorb our food and our nutrients from our food and that’s how we’re going to make a recovery.

Again, I mentioned a product called GI Shield earlier or something like that might be quite helpful for coating and lining the stomach and preventing some of that potential type of damage. Let’s see here, plant foods equals sugar foods, sugar foods equals acidic equal fiber in plant foods, I’m not sure I get what you’re saying. Fiber in plant foods are like brillo pad on digestive mucosal membrane. Just 200 years, 10 months out of the year, we had no plant foods … okay, I get what you’re saying at this point. I don’t wholeheartedly agree that as a blanket statement. I believe we can overeat in any particular food area and it become a toxic problem for us.

I firmly believe that we do need fiber and much of our fiber comes from plant foods. I also firmly believe that we can overdo fiber and we can overdo … especially in the juicing arena, we can overdo juicing things in that nature. We get no fiber and where we get too much sugar, and then that can create blood sugar issues among other problems. I believe many people go vegetarian without merit, not without merit … let me rephrase that, go vegetarian for the wrong reason. Well, I don’t even want to say wrong reason because I respect anybody’s desire to change their diet especially if it’s religious implication or if it’s an animal rights implication.

At the same time, if you destroy yourself to not kill an animal, then I don’t necessarily agree with that. Meat is necessary for most people. Vegetables are necessary for most people. I think the bigger issue is people eat too much of certain things for too long a period of time creating imbalances within their system that actually lead to many other diseases that we see in our modern world. I’m not saying that a person who’s a vegetarian or a vegan couldn’t be healthy because some people are better suited for the vegetarian diet and some people are not. Again, that’s when I make the statement some people go vegetarian or vegan for the wrong reasons.

They’re going for a valid reason but they’re not going for a reason that’s going to improve their health. Anyway, not sure where the question in that was, I think it was just more of a commentary. Thanks Stan for chiming in. Martha, is it possible that yeast overgrowth wouldn’t be detected with a three-day comprehensive stool analysis? What’s the best test that you recommend to determine yeast overgrowth in the gut? A three-day stool analysis is generally pretty accurate because not only are they running a culture on that type of test, depending on the lab, oftentimes, they’ll run a culture.

They also do what’s called a microscopic evaluation where they’re looking under microscope at the specimen to see whether or not there are actual colonies of yeast present. I would say it’s one of the more accurate ways to assess. Now some people will also run serum antibody test where you can measure for antibodies to different types of yeast. The problem with that is if you run antibodies for Candida albicans, for example, and you don’t have a Candida overgrowth but you have a geotrichum overgrowth, that’s not going to be detected out of blood antibody test.

If you’re doing blood antibodies to try to detect yeast overgrowth, you want to do comprehensive antibodies for multiple forms of yeast in order to get an accurate assessment as to whether or not that person is reacting to yeast overgrowth. It can sometimes be a clinical assessment meaning that, yes, is it possible to have a negative stool result where there are still yeast overgrowth? Yeah, I’ve seen that a lot. Where I’ve seen that more specifically is I’ve people have yeast, like women in particular have a vaginal yeast overgrowth but not a gastrointestinal yeast overgrowth. A gastrointestinal test didn’t pick up the yeast overgrowth in the vaginal canal.

It’s geographic location, right? You can have an oral or gastrointestinal yeast overgrowth but you can also have a systemic overgrowth. You can also have an overgrowth in the skin that looks like eggs in mild psoriasis because you can have an overgrowth underneath the nail bed. Men can have an overgrowth in their ureter. Women can have an overgrowth in the vagina. You can have yeast overgrowth, again, in lots of different areas. The test can come back negative and the yeast overgrowth could be present but maybe just not present within the gut. Hopefully that’s helpful for you.

Andrea is asking or saying, I have quite a food sensitivities and specifically IgG. I’m going to assume that’s IGG subtype four. How long does it take to get rid of them if possible and when to retest for IgG? First of all, I’m going to clarify, this is just my opinion. I don’t recommend IgG testing. I don’t think it’s super accurate. Let me rephrase that. I don’t think it’s comprehensive enough. IgG is one way we can have a reaction to food. There’s IgG, there’s IgA, there’s IgM, there’s IgD, there’s immune complex response, there’s t-cell response, and there’s IgE response. You’ve got all those different ways that you can have a food allergy and measuring one of them, it’s not comprehensive.

To answer the question, let’s just say it were comprehensive although I don’t agree that it is. Let’s say that … how long would it take to get rid of a food allergy? Sometimes you don’t, sometimes what you’re allergic to is a true allergy, meaning you’re allergic to it and it won’t go away. Sometimes what you’re allergic to is an acquired allergy meaning you acquire it because of fundamental breakdown in your immune system. Once you fix your immune system and get your immune system back online and support it, then the allergy can go away.

The answer to that question is, in my experience, it can take anywhere from 6 to 36 months depending on the other things that you’re doing in a comprehensive approach to try to recover your immune system’s capacity and to try to reduce you hypoallergenicity. Good questions. My daughter has allergic enteropathy. She stopped eating and has needed a feeding tube initially for top ups of fluid. Her pH was two or less when I checked it last. Again, I don’t know what you mean when you say pH is two or less, which compartment of the body are we checking? Has been extremely ill with pain and racing heart, I’ve recently started her on Culturelle, Saccharomyces boulardii, Bact powder, betaine and flax seed oil. She’s only had slightly better spells while on antibiotics. Have you any other suggestions?

You got to get her in … I mean, if she’s in that kind of a bad shape, you got to get her into a really, really well qualified functional medicine doctor, preferably one who specializes in gastrointestinal disorders. Because this is, in my experience, I can’t really say what’s wrong because without her being in my office and me being able to evaluate her. I would say that with allergic enteropathy, the issue oftentimes is she’s just eating everything wrong. Once the gut breaks, for example, on your scenario here, giving her flax is a bad idea. Giving her Culturelle is not a great idea either because that’s a dairy-based agent and that can have an inflammatory effect on the gut.

I think what I would do Jane is I would make sure that somebody test her for food allergies so that you can determine, even though she’s on bad food, you’ve got her on feeding tube. You’ve got to determine what isn’t going to create irritation. See if in the feeding tube is still going into the GI tract. If she’s not on parenteral nutrition where you’re IVing her nutrients, she actually got a feeding tube in. Let’s just say that they’re using some kind of genetically modified corn slurry in that feeding tube, that would be a bad idea. She’s never going to recover if she has a problem with grains and maybe what they’re using is a GMO-based feeds, maybe she’s got a problem with glyphosate. Again, there’s a lot of complexity within that question. I would just find that really solid qualified functional medicine practitioner who’s got a degree of specialty in gastrointestinal issues.

Let’s see. Veronica is asking, would apple cider vinegar work taking before meals with low stomach acid? Yeah, it can. It can be a very helpful digestive aid, apple cider vinegar or ACV sometimes as it’s abbreviated, can be quite helpful for improving digestion before the meal. A lot of people will use it for that very reason. Yes, good question. Thank you so much Nancy. Another Nancy in New Mexico says, thanks for saving her life, so thankful. You’re welcome Nancy. Thanks for chiming in, that means a lot. Okay, Sue is asking, would a keto, paleo or vegan diet be good for someone with gluten intolerance, dairy intolerance, IBS and bile acid malabsorption type three?

I have antispasm meds and a binder but still have loose bowel issues with chronic pain issues. Again, Sue, without knowing more in your direct history, I’d go back to you got to get tested for food allergens. You got to get tested for delayed reactions. You got to have all those different methodologies measured so that you can better ascertain what diet you need to be on. Because oftentimes, a broken gut to that severe degree is that you’re still putting in ingredients that won’t allow to make a recovery or heal. That would be where I’d probably start. I’d also have someone look at your gut flora because oftentimes again, we get a severe deficit in the microbiome or an abnormality in the microbiome that’s going to lead to irritable bowel type syndromes and symptoms.

Let’s see here. Jane is chiming in with a little more information, a rare genetic condition, epilepsy and no verbal communication so it makes more difficult to know what’s wrong. Yeah, it really does. I empathize with you Jane and I’ll pray for you. Her doctor said she should stay on probiotics because of it. Okay. What I would suggest then, if her doctor is recommending a probiotioc and use something other than Culturelle, Ultra Biotic Defense or Biotic Defense would be a much better match and the higher Ultra Biotic Defense, the higher dose there. I’ve seen it oftentimes stabilize a person’s diarrhea so you might try there.

Again, it doesn’t change my initial advice which is, maybe you have a really good doctor but also work with a good qualified functional medicine doctor that’s got an expertise in the gastrointestinal tract because there’s a lot more going on there. Epilepsy, as an example, is also a known manifestation or reactivity for people with gluten sensitivity. Gluten can be neurotoxin for many and create an epileptic seizure disorder which can lead to spasms in the GI tract, among other places. Getting with somebody to get a comprehensive eval might be very, very helpful.

Regarding chemical exposure and sensitivities, what are your thoughts on hot tubs, steam rooms and swimming pools? Yeah, good question. I think if you’re struggling really hard with chemical sensitivities, swimming pool probably for particularly where they use higher doses of chlorine and chloramines is probably an area you should stay away from including hot tubs, steam rooms. Yeah, basically, you’re heating the room and then the air in the room. Again, public steam rooms I would avoid. Now, if you’ve got one that’s private that you’re using at home, that might be a little bit different of a matter.

Again, depending on what the steam room is made out of. Some of the steam rooms are cedar-based so there’s not a whole lot of chemical exposure and something like that. Public places I would say tend to avoid all three of those, good question. All right, Monica is saying hello. Hello Monica. Kathryn says, I skipped yours, did I skip a question? I didn’t see it Kathryn. Maybe if you repost it for me, I can get it answered for you. No, didn’t see it. Yeah, repost that for me or put it back on the top and I can get it answered for you. Okay, we’re running low on time but I’m going to take this last one here. Kayla is asking, what about hot yoga? Hot yoga is fine provided you’re well hydrated.

I’ve seen hot yoga sessions. It gets pretty hot in there and yoga can be a pretty intense activity or exercise. If you’re doing something like a hot yoga and you’re doing it every day, I’ve seen it where it dehydrates people and it creates a lot of muscle spasms and twitching and things of that nature. With hot yoga, you just have to be careful not to get dehydrated but I love yoga. I think yoga is one of the best and fundamental things that you can do to improve your flexibility and doing it in a hotter environment is perfectly fine, again, provided you’re not sweating so much and not getting adequate hydration back into you that it’s creating a dehydration effect that leads to spasm.

Hot yoga though in and of itself is just fine. Just, again, stay well hydrated. Lizzie is chiming in, is it safe to fast if you are on medication? Depends on the medication, some medications, if you’re supposed to take them with food and you don’t and the reason you’re supposed to take them with food is because they’re damaging to your GI tract, then no, it’s not safe. It largely depends on the nature of the medication and why you’re taking it and what the mechanism of action of the medication is. That would be a great question, if you chime it with the medicine, I might be able to give you better feedback.

That’s, again, another question you could ask the prescribing doctor is. What are the side effects of this medication in terms of if I take it and I don’t eat, is there any danger to my gastrointestinal tract in that line or in that thought process. Okay, Kathryn is saying I skipped it again, laugh out loud. Well, you skipped it again. I was just before the last one. I just don’t see it. Maybe it’s just not showing up on my screen, Kathryn. Let me do something and see if I can find it over here. Yeah, I just don’t see it. Maybe if you type it in again because it’s just not showing up on my screen. I don’t see a question from you. I just see your responses about how I missed it so apologize but it’s just not coming through. Love to acknowledge you but sometimes it’s the glitch.

Okay, well that’s a wrap for me today folks. I’ve got to run. I’ve got another appointment that I got to go make. I want to just say thank you for joining me again for another session of the Pick Dr. Osborne’s Brain. I’m still waiting for you guys to show me and share with me your screenshots of your sharing because I really, really, badly want to giveaway free products, free supplements to you. I really want to help you but you’ve got to play by the rules and you’ve got to enter the game. In order to do that, I need you, take this video.

If you know somebody that it can help, share it with them on Facebook, share it with them in other social media and take a screenshot of that share and send those in. The person who shares the most is going to be our winner. We’re going to take three winners next week again but you have to participate in the game or I can’t giveaway prices so help me help you and help me spread more of this information to more people who need to get better, who need the answers to these questions in their life in order to improve their health and together, we can help more people and everybody wins. Until next week, have a wonderful weekend.

This is Dr. Osborne signing out and take care.

Natural Tips for Gut Health-Transcript from Pick Dr. Osborne’s Brain

Natural Tips to Restore Gut Health

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