96. Gut Aging Connection Dr. Vincent Pedre

Dr. Vincent Pedre 0:02

leaky gut is like the portal to many other chronic conditions in the body.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 0:12

Welcome to the your longevity blueprint podcast. I'm your host Dr. Stephanie gray. My number one goal with the show is to help you discover your personalized plan to build your dream health and live a longer, happier, truly healthier life. You're about to hear from Dr. Benson Padre. Today we're going to break down leaky gut and gut inflammation contributors and how they relate to mental health and chronic disease. Let's get started

Welcome to another episode of The your longevity blueprint podcast today. My guest is Dr. Vincent Padre who is the medical director of Padre Integrative Health and founder of Dr. Padre wellness nutraceutical consultant for nature MD, and orthomolecular products, CEO of happy gut life and a functional medicine certified practitioner in private practice in New York City since 2004. He believes a gut is the gateway to excellent wellness, as the best selling author of happy gut, the cleansing program to help you lose weight, gain energy and eliminate pain, featuring his proprietary blueprint for healing the gut, the gut care program, he has helped 1000s around the world resolve their gut related health issues. So welcome to the show. Dr. Padre,

Dr. Vincent Pedre 1:21

thank you for having me. I'm excited. Well, we

Dr. Stephanie Gray 1:24

both must love blueprints, because in my book back here, your longevity blueprint, I'm comparing the foundation of the home to the gastrointestinal system in the body. So I'm sure you agree that our gut really is our foundation of health.

Dr. Vincent Pedre 1:36

Absolutely. I I've used many different terms, the root system, I've called it the cornerstone of our health. Yes, the gut is central and critical to so many things. And especially if we're thinking about longevity, and brain health, the gut brain connection is just so important. And I

Dr. Stephanie Gray 1:54

want to dive into that and talk more about that today. But first kind of tell me what got you so interested in the gut microbiome and just gut health in general as it relates to promoting health and wellness? So where does your story be in?

Dr. Vincent Pedre 2:06

Oh, geez, my story actually begins as a child that had a lot of gut issues, upset stomach, constipation, I was basically subjected to, like round after round of antibiotics from around the age of 10, all the way through the end of my teenage years, I calculated that I was on 20 Plus rounds of antibiotics during that decade. And as a result, I developed leaky gut. And because of a leaky gut, I then became sensitive to the top two biggest food groups in my diet, wheat, gluten, and dairy. And i Little did I know that I was, you know, poisoning myself all through my 20s not not realizing that the foods that I was eating, were weakening my immune system and making me feel sick to my my god, having, you know, IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, but not really understanding that it was connected to my diet, I often thought that it was related to stress to my nerves. And yeah, that's one part of the picture.

But there was this whole other part of the picture that I wasn't fully getting. And I didn't quite get until I started learning about the gut microbiome, and leaky gut, and understanding why gluten might be bad for me. And that was a really huge decision in that in 2007, actually, when I decided to go gluten free, long time ago, yeah, long time ago, but it changed my life, gluten free and dairy free. And actually, I'm still mostly gluten free like 99.9%. And dairy, I only have seasonally over the summer months, and then the rest of the year, I won't have dairy because it weakens my immune system. And then I'm just more susceptible to viruses and cold. So a lot of what I do is to keep my health optimized, and I think just being intuitive about it, but it was really you know, if I think of that the I was basically patient zero with my gut issues. And through me seen, from my own experience, what a powerful transformation can happen by changing the diet by incorporating, eating organic, making, you know, being really keen about how food is sourced, and then starting to incorporate probiotics, fermented foods, varying the diet, and seeing that gut healing can happen in that what I thought was a life sentence of irritable bowel was actually something that I could resolve.

I started working with patients on it, and it was just me kind of like almost like a hobby. Like I just thought it was fun. And whenever a patient came in with gut health issues, which up until that point as a trained doctor, we only had a few magic tools to Take a bar doctor bag, and then I go into functional medicine. And there's all these different things, you might have yeast overgrowth, you might have SIBO, you might have an underlying parasite, we can do all this testing can figure out what foods you might be sensitive to. And suddenly, I have this giant toolkit of things that I could do with people. So I thought, you know, this is a lot of fun. And people would, my patients would get better, and they would send a family, friend or family member or friend, because they had gotten better. And so they recommend. And so, before I knew it, I had become an accidental guide expert. I wasn't really planning on this. But it's kind of the way my life went. And I realized, this is my passion. This is what I really want to dedicate myself to. And that finally led to me writing my book, happy gut. And that's kind of opened up the door created the tidal wave that has brought me to so many places and done so many interviews, like your podcast and been on TV and done a lot of great things.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 6:10

Do you still I have not read your book? But is there a happy ending there? Like were you able to tell the audience were you able to heal your gut after, you know, a decade of insults from antibiotics? And? Well, absolutely,

Dr. Vincent Pedre 6:20

yeah. And, and it's an ongoing project, you know, so there's the recognizing that if I go out to a restaurant and say it's holidays, and I decide I'm going to cheat, or just be a little more lacks on my diet, I know that I might pay for it, in a sense. So I might not feel well for the next day. But what I can tell you is I recover like that, I can recover really fast. And that's what we see when you when you start healing the gut. You may not like for me, I can't eat gluten, like I have an immune reaction to gluten. I can never bring it back. Can I cheat at a holiday party and have a little bit? If there's something really good? Yeah, I could. And sometimes I might make that decision. And then I know I'm gonna have to deal with the consequence. But what I've seen even working with patients is that the more you heal, the less it takes to recover from little indiscretions in the diet, you know, whereas before and indiscretion in the diet could mean two weeks of misery.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 7:29

Yep. Yep, get glutened. And yeah, do you use I know, we're kind of going off on a tangent here. But do you use obviously your What did I read in your bio consultant for orthomolecular products? They have a new, amazing product, the DG protect an enzyme to help break down gluten and dairy, which I do like what's your opinion on that? Do you feel like that's very helpful in times that you do intentionally cheat, or sometimes it's accidental, it's not even intentional. But

Dr. Vincent Pedre 7:51

yeah, sometimes it can be accidental, you go to a restaurant, and they tell you everything's gluten free, dairy free, but the waiter sometimes doesn't know or they're just telling you what they what you want to hear so that you're happy and they can get you off their plate. Well, I just did a presentation for orthomolecular on the ingredients in Digi protect the gluten lytic and dairy lytic. And the evidence is really compelling the ability of blue to lytic. To break down gluten peptides within 90 minutes, almost 100% of it is broken down. And it's because of the quality of the peptide in that which is kind of you could think of it as the new generation of DPP four, but it's an endo peptidase and an Exo peptidase. And what that means is, if a protein you know, say I'm taking this from my sounding bowl, this is my, I've gotten my sound bowl sitting here next to me. But let's say this is a protein, it's not folded right now.

But endo peptidase are going to cut proteins in the middle and exhale, peptidase is are going to cut them at the end. When you bring in both enzymes, then they chop it up really well. And they can break down a protein really efficiently. And what this product does is it outperforms DPP four. So the gluta lytic, is way faster and has a much stronger ability at breaking down those proteins like gluten in in wheat, which is very difficult to break down by our own digestive system. So if you're going to go out and you're going to cheat, or you're just going to have a good time, then that's the time to pop in that extra enzyme support, and at least reduce the likelihood because the more it's broken down into into its component amino acids, the less likely it's going to cause any sort of immunological reaction and it's not going to damage the gut lining as much.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 9:42

So for those listeners, we're not saying you can't eat gluten, we're saying if on occasion, like the holidays, you accidentally or intentionally choose to consume some this can really lessen that burden on your body. So

Dr. Vincent Pedre 9:54

I have my patients who like to eat out and when they eat out Exactly, yeah. When you eat out and you don't want to be stressed, like you might tell the the restaurant you're gluten free, dairy free. Or you might be embarrassed to say it. I mean, I don't know I have. I'm always like, Yeah, I'm one of those. What's on your menu? You can imagine when I go out with my my science doctor friends, like, it's like, okay, we've got gluten free, dairy free, soy free. We can't have any of that omega six oils.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 10:30

But that's how we should be eating. Okay,

Dr. Vincent Pedre 10:32

so what do you buy your food with? Do you use avocado oil? Or do you?

Dr. Stephanie Gray 10:36

I do use that? Yeah, me personally. Yes. So let's come back, I want to talk about the gut aging connection, since this is more of a longevity podcast, but you opened when you were telling us your story, a little bit of how you developed leaky gut. And we've talked a little bit about that on the podcast, but can you differentiate this is a more difficult question, but can you differentiate leaky gut symptoms versus kind of SIBO and even yeast overgrowth? So that's kind of a triad I see a lot in some of these patients have all of those. But can you kind of differentiate quickly to the audience? what those are, as you kind of mentioned, those were problems you were finding in your patients, as you kind of became this gut specialty doctor.

Dr. Vincent Pedre 11:13

Yeah, absolutely. So SIBO is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. And what that means is that there is a higher concentration of bacteria present in the small intestine where they're not supposed to be present. And it could be an overgrowth of bacteria that normally live in the small intestine like lactobacillus. Or it could be bacteria that have migrated from the bigger reservoir of the gut microbiome, the large intestine, into the small intestine through the ileocecal valve. And it doesn't matter which type it is, it's going to cause the same types of symptoms. Candida or fungal overgrowth is just basically an excess of yeast in the gut. The confusing thing is that you can have SIBO, you can have SIBO, small intestinal fungal overgrowth, or candida as people know it, that you can have both of them at the same time. And both of these can lead to leaky gut. So now you can have a triple whammy, you've got SIBO, CFO, and you've got leaky gut, so small intestinal fungal overgrowth for SIBO.

So I almost you know, one time I wrote a post about this, and I said, you know, maybe we need to stop talking about SIBO and SIBO, and just start talking about SIBO, which is small intestine, microbial overgrowth, and microbial could be bacterial, it could be yeast, or it could be both. And I think if we think about it that way, then it becomes easier to not miss something with a patient. Because I think oftentimes, if you think, Oh, you just have SIBO. And you're not thinking about SIBO, or Candida, but you haven't really rolled it out, you haven't rolled it in, you haven't rolled it out. But you're overlooking it, and then your patient is getting better from SIBO. And then suddenly, they start having symptoms again, well, is their SIBO coming back? Or is there something you missed?

Dr. Stephanie Gray 13:13

You raise a good point, because for the listeners, the conventional approach, if your conventional doc even test you for SIBO, but that conventional treatment approach is an antibiotic, which antibiotics would not treat the sea full, right, they could feed potentially feed the yeast,

Dr. Vincent Pedre 13:29

and they can actually antibiotics. What they do is they they come in, and they shift the ecology. So they allow another predator to come in that's not affected by the antibiotic. In this case, they will they can allow yeast overgrowth by decimating the presence of good bacteria as well. So what I've seen over the years a lot of times is someone has SIBO, they see a conventional doctor, they get an antibiotic, they feel better for anywhere between one and three months. And then they start feeling worse, again, similar symptoms, so SIBO and SIBO, Candida, they can masquerade, they can look the same. But there are different underlying causes. And the question there is, do they have repeat SIBO? Or do they now have Candida, which was triggered by being put on antibiotics, and the fact that they they started their foundation wasn't good. The reason that they developed you have to go backwards in pathophysiology is like, Well, why did this person develop SIBO in the first place?

Or do they have low stomach acid which is something that that increases with age so the older you are, the more likely you are to have lower stomach acid. With lower stomach acid you're not as protected from bacteria and yeast that come naturally are found on foods that come through the food. So that puts you at a higher risk for are developing a bacterial overgrowth or fungal overgrowth in the small intestine. So you really have to think about all those things. Because what we do in functional medicine is we look for the root cause of the condition, we don't just stop by treating the condition, we're looking at what was the underlying process in the first place that caused this person to develop the symptoms. And when we you know, we started by talking about, you know, the connection between SIBO, CFO and leaky gut. And also, I think very important to know for people is that leaky gut is like the portal to many other chronic conditions in the body. Yes,

Dr. Stephanie Gray 15:44

that was my next question for you. So it's, it's connected

Dr. Vincent Pedre 15:48

to everything so to the lungs to asthma, to allergies, to migraines, to brain health issues, mental fog,

Dr. Stephanie Gray 16:00

endometriosis, you know, even reproductive issues. Yeah. So all of that

Dr. Vincent Pedre 16:05

hormonal balance, autoimmunity, all of these things can have a common factor in leaky gut.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 16:12

So how and kind of why so as functional medicine practitioners, we know this, but can you share with the audience? So what is that connection? So how does leaky gut contribute to asthma or endometriosis, or eczema or whatnot,

Dr. Vincent Pedre 16:24

leaky gut is gonna is almost like downstream process from what caused it. So usually, leaky gut is happening in the setting of antibiotics have a poor diet of excess alcohol intake, high stress, exposure to over the counter medicines like ibuprofen. And even you know, I found this interesting because a study showed that acetaminophen can cause dysbiosis imbalance between good and bad bugs, and that leads to leaky gut. So we used to just say that NSAIDs lead to leaky gut. But now we know that even a set of monofin, which is not an NSAID can also lead to leaky gut, birth control pill leads to leaky gut. And leaky gut then allows for more inflammation to becoming inflammatory factors to be coming in through that gut interface.

That can be endotoxin. It can be actually bacteria, bacterial DNA has been found in the bloodstream of people, especially the leaky or the gut. And that turns on an inflammatory cascade that is going to be expressed in different ways by different people. So one person may be their Achilles heel is their brain. So they're going to have more brain symptoms. And other person, their Achilles heel is the lungs. So they're going to have a lot of lung symptoms, or they might have allergies, or allergies. It's amazing what happens when you clean out the diet, you fix the gut, then other issues just start to improve that a lot of times you don't you just don't expect like people will be surprised, like I fix my diet, my gut is better. But now my my sinuses aren't inflamed like they used to be.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 18:08

It is amazing. It is amazing. And I think that's what's very rewarding about what we do is many times without drugs, we just see a tremendous healing process and that patients get to see the power of what their body can do it, it really can heal itself. So thank you for explaining that. So let's come back to this concept of inflammation. You kind of just talked about that as far as how inflammation can manifest in different organ systems. But how does that tie in to aging,

Dr. Vincent Pedre 18:31

very important that endotoxins. So when you have leaky gut, and endotoxin, also known as LPs, or lipo polysaccharide, which has an incredible ability to get through membranes, so it can get through the blood brain barrier, which is a protective barrier that, you know, creates a protected circulation for the brain. Well, that LPS can get through there. And there are receptors for LPS in the hypothalamus. They're called toll like receptors. And when that receptor gets activated, it turns on a whole cascade. It's kind of like a domino effect is just imagine once that receptor gets activated, it sets off this whole domino effect inside the cell that turns on the expression of the NF kappa B, which then turns on a whole bunch of inflammatory genes. Well, what is an inflamed brain and inflamed hypothalamus? It's depressed, maybe anxious.

It's having mental fog. It's having memory issues because memory starts in the hypothalamus. And so we talk about these things. And these are kind of like the things we associate with aging, like not remembering things, forgetting where you put your keys, having word recall difficulties, not remembering what the thought that you just had, it just escaped you. These are all signs that can happen from a shrinking hypothalamus that can be related to leaky gut, amongst other things, the other connection, you know, if we want to tie it back into the brain and the gut brain connection, is the HPA axis. And when people are highly stressed, they're in fight or flight, which is very common these days. Their cortisol levels are high, that causes a disturbance in the gut microbiome. So you get more unfavorable bugs that increases the permeability of the gut. And high cortisol in the brain causes the hypothalamus to shrink. And that leads to memory issues.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 20:33

Did you hear that listeners? Say that again, high cortisol causes the hypothalamus to shrink.

Dr. Vincent Pedre 20:39

Yeah, yikes. And just think, you know, if you have high cortisol, you're in fight or flight, that means that you're in this catecholamines surge. And what I teach people is that catecholamines are like an attack on the gut, they basically increase the permeability of the gut lining. So it becomes this cascade of events. And once you've got shrinking of the hypothalamus, it's gonna take a lot of work to rebuild that, you know, you've got to work on the diet, you've got to work on gut health, you've got to work on a lot of things to help to start to rebuild memory and brain health.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 21:13

Sure. Well, tell me, is there a microbiome of aging?

Dr. Vincent Pedre 21:18

That's a really great question. And there have been studies done on how the microbiome evolves as we age. And there's definitely differences in the makeup of the microbiome. And one of the factors that they think is responsible for aging is that as people age, the microbiome starts to shift. And there'll be there may be more bacteria in the microbiome that support inflammation than bacteria that support anti inflammation. I ran into a study that was really interesting, it was done looking at centenarians, so kind of going backwards and thinking, you know, centenarians seem to have this decreased susceptibility to illnesses. What's that said

Dr. Stephanie Gray 22:08

to everything?

Dr. Vincent Pedre 22:09

Yeah, like to chronic inflammation to infectious diseases. And they ask the question, is there something about the gut microbiota that gives centenarians this greater distance? Yeah, like more resistant to infection to environmental stressors. And in this one study, they looked at centenarians, and they actually discovered a new, secondary bile metabolite, that was called ISO aloe, lythrum folic acid. And for anyone who doesn't know what bile metabolites are, you know, so your, your liver produces bile, and bile is part of what helps us emulsify the fats in the foods that we eat. So we can absorb the fats, we can absorb fat soluble vitamins.

And Bile is also an anti microbial people might not realize this, but sometimes, people who have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth actually just have bile acid deficiency, they're not producing enough bile, or maybe they've had their gallbladder out. So they're more susceptible. Well, there are bacteria in the gut that take those bite those primary bile acids, and they metabolize them into these secondary bile acids. And they play important roles, both in the body and in the gut. And what they found was centenarians, were producing a secondary bile acid that was and then it's a series of them. So there's a couple of different ISO three Oxo aloe, ISO Aloe lithoco, like acid. And what this secondary bile acid metabolite seem to be able to do is it had antimicrobial properties against gram positive, multi drug resistant pathogens, including C diff, and Enterococcus faecium, which are two inflammatory types of bacteria that might live inside a person's gut inside the microbiome. And they also had strains of a type of bacteria called Auto rebacked or SCA. Don't you love these names?

Dr. Stephanie Gray 24:23

You pronounced it well, I want to be able to pronounce

Dr. Vincent Pedre 24:26

it like how did I do that? They're able to take the bile acid and metabolize it into the secondary bile acid metabolite that seems to have some benefit in reducing their risk of infection and maintaining a healthy gut environment. You know, and I think it's such a great thing to ask, like, you know, look at centenarians and asked, you know, what is different about their gut microbiome that Why have they lived this many years? Why you know, why them and others not so much

Dr. Stephanie Gray 24:57

get a fecal transplant from you Just kidding. So what did we take from that study, though? So do you think that it may be I'm pulling it strings here? But do you think more individuals should be taking bio as they age? I mean, would that be helpful to help regulate pathogenic load? And is that is that maybe a take home? From that?

Dr. Vincent Pedre 25:16

I think it's a good question. I think for anyone who, especially if they do a stool analysis, and they find that there's fat malabsorption, in the stool analysis, they should be taking some form of comprehensive enzyme that has bile in it, a lot of these people also need to look at their ability to break down protein. And they might need to be taking that Tane HCL to augment stomach acid in order to be able to break down their protein. And a lot of times, you'll find comprehensive enzymes that have both Tibetian, HCl, they have the proteases. And they've got the ox bile to help the person, you know, comprehensively break down protein and absorb fat in a way that's going to be friendlier to the body. So I think yeah, I mean, I think this is really important. And what a lot of people don't realize, and I've seen over the years is, as my patients get older, they'll tell me Oh, I don't I'm eating less meat now, because I just don't digest it. Well, I hear that too. Yeah. And it might not be the best thing for them. Because they they still need protein in healthy amounts in order to maintain lean body mass. And they might not even be breaking down the plant proteins properly. Because if they're starting to eat less meat, because they don't digested properly, that's a sign of low stomach acid.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 26:34

Yeah. And that's also something we can find on the stool tests that you're alluding to, like we can check to see if literally patients are pooping out their fats, we can also look to see if they're pooping out their protein, suggestive that they need some hydrochloric acid to help with digestion there too. So a really comprehensive stool test from a functional medicine practitioner can help you really determine what your your needs are we've been talking about. So do you feel like it's important to live in multigenerational households? And why is that important? What what does that have to do with our microbiome? Is there a relationship? That's

Dr. Vincent Pedre 27:03

a great question. So I went to the microbiome Congress pre pandemic, so I think it was 2019. And listen to a presenter from McGill University, I believe in Canada, who was doing studies of multigenerational microbiomes. And what they found was that because we also in these multi generational households is where we find a lot of centenarians, what she was finding is that older people who lived in multi Gen generational households had a younger fingerprint of their microbiome than ones that didn't. And the theory was that there was some sharing of microbiome that was happening by being in a house with little kids with teenagers with other people that were younger, that they were actually, you know, kind of like cross pollinating their microbiomes and keeping their own microbiome younger than what it would be if you were just living separately, and aging. So I think it's something to to explore. And even I know now, like people are exploring these conscious living communities, so kind of like the next iteration of a retirement community. But instead of just being for old people actually being a multigenerational conscious living community where their kids are people of all ages. And maybe that's a better way to look at the way we should be aging, not like saying, Okay, you're old now go live with other old people only. Yeah, and be separate from all the younger people.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 28:36

There are so many strengths. And I think mixing that different age demographics. I love that love hearing that. So again, back to just how this is a longevity podcast, what impact do you think intermittent fasting has on longevity and kind of gut health? Is there a relationship there?

Dr. Vincent Pedre 28:53

First of all, when you fast, one thing that you're doing is you're giving your gut arrest. And during that rest, your gut has a chance when it's not digesting. It's repairing. And while you're fasting, your gut can turn on all the repair processes. And depending on you know, women or male, the the healthier across the board fast is a 12 hour overnight fast. That's okay for everyone. When you start getting into longer fast, they tend to not be as good for women than men. The thing to know about fasting and aging is look, you reduce your inflammation, you're reducing endotoxemia you're allowing repair of those tight junctions in the guts, you're allowing the permeability of the gut to reset. So it does a lot of these really great things. What you don't want to do when you're fasting is get your body into a stress mode because maybe you're eating too little, you know, so you can take fasting too extreme, and then you're not eating enough and then your body Are you starting to feel stressed, you start becoming bio physically stressed, which means then we go back to the high cortisol, the catecholamines, and the leaky gut, and the effects on the brain.

So there's a balance there. But I do find that a lot of my patients, especially as my patients get older, they enjoy fasting, and they find that they think more clearly when they're fasting, and the brain runs better on ketones than it does on sugar. Even just considering the type of diet that one is adhering to as we get older, I often joke with my patients that the body is like playing a board game that changes the rules on you as you get older, but doesn't tell you what the rules have changed too, you have to figure it out by playing the game. Now sometimes playing the game means that you're playing with the old rules from when you were 20 in your 20s and 30s. And then you start gaining weight and you don't understand why well you're eating too many refined carbs, you're eating too much sugar. And whereas before you could cut it out for a week and you would start losing weight. Now your body doesn't do that rolls because John Yeah, the rules change board game rules chains, and you've got to be savvy and keep up with the rule changes if you want to stay healthy into your later years.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 31:26

You might not know this, but building a healthy gut or gastrointestinal system is one of the most important things you should be working on to maintain your health and longevity. That's why actually in my book, Your longevity blueprint, I devote the entire first chapter to the gut. I like to compare the gut or gastrointestinal system to the foundation of your home, you have to have a strong gastrointestinal system upon which to build great health. So with that in mind, I want to share a few tips to help you do just that. The first step with improving your gut health is to clean up your diet, removing inflammatory foods, foods you may have sensitivities towards and treating gut infections. Like I mentioned, I get into this in a lot more depth in chapter one of my book. Once you've done that, however, there are also some amazing nutrients that exists to help you heal further. Two of my favorite your longevity blueprint combination powder products for helping patients heal their guts are called gut shield and gi support. God shield contains several important ingredients including glutamine and zinc. Glutamine is the most important non essential amino acid for gut healing and zinc is a top mineral for gut healing as well. God shield also contains n acetyl, D glucosamine and aloe vera and acetyl D glucosamine is a mucin precursor that has been shown to increase the production of mucus within the GI tract.

This is beneficial in coding the tract and protecting it. That shield also contains de glycerides licorice root extract also known as DGL, a form of licorice root that does not contain glycerin which can raise blood pressure. Licorice has been known to treat and heal ulcers, it works as a demulcent. to sue the irritated tissue. It's antispasmodic, anti inflammatory and anti allergenic Aloevera has been used throughout history to promote a normal inflammatory response. You may have used it on your cuts, scrapes or burns as a child studies have shown the aloe vera is also specifically beneficial to the gastric mucosa in part through its ability to balance stomach acid levels and promote healthy mucus production. All these gut healing nutrients are packed into one little scoop of powder that can be added to a beverage of your choice or mixed into a smoothie. I recommend patients consume this consistently for at least three months for gut healing. My second favorite product for gut healing is called gi support a gut healing protein powder containing glutamine as well. The difference here is that gi support is also loaded with natural anti inflammatories like turmeric, it also contains arabinogalactan ZZ which serve as prebiotic fiber and it contains green tea extract also known as EGCG. A potent antioxidant that further helps to reduce inflammation. It's the Cadillac of gut healing patterns because it has protein, the amino acid, glutamine, prebiotics, anti inflammatories, and antioxidants all in one scoop.

And yes, it can be combined with gut shield. Consider taking the synergistic one daily while focusing on cleaner eating. These products aren't needed forever, but they sure help expedite the healing process of your gut lining. Check out more product information on our website and use code heal gut for 10% off either product that's got shield or GI support at your longevity blueprint.com. Now let's get back to the show. I love that I've never heard that. That's a great that explains a lot got to figure out those rules. Okay. I know you're also very passionate about the gut brain connection. So you've alluded to this a little bit already today. But how can improving our gut health really improve mental health?

Dr. Vincent Pedre 34:38

Yeah, the first thing to really think about there is the vagus nerve and the connection, one of the cranial nerves and its connection between the brain and the brainstem and the gut because it's controlling a lot of what's going on in the brain. I call it the telephone wire between the gut and the brain that allows the gut in the brain to speak to each other. The thing is, there are more wires, I think 80% pointing up to the brain from the gut, than from the brain down to the gut. So there's actually more feedback going to the brain. And it turns out that our little gut bugs are producing neurotransmitters like serotonin.

And the vagus nerve has five HT receptors at the its nerve endings in the guts. So when those little gut bacteria produce serotonin, they bind to the five HT receptor at the end of that of the, the afferent neuron for the vagus nerve, and sends an impulse to the brain. And those impulses can do different things. And one of the things that are one of the neurotransmitters that secreted through a vagal impulse is GABA, which is gamma amino butyric acid and inhibitory neurotransmitter that kind of calms things down. But it's that vagus nerve is really key to the health of both the brain as well as the gut. And what happens is, with people with mental health issues, like depression and anxiety is they lose vagal tone. So imagine vagal tone as the dial tone on your telephone. In the olden days, when you remember that. I don't think anybody has these anymore. But when used to pick up the phone and had a dial tone,

Dr. Stephanie Gray 36:21

yeah, one right here.

Dr. Vincent Pedre 36:25

And the dial tone basically was there to let you know that the phone is working, but it's not dead. And remember, when you pick up the dial tone, and you don't hear anything, and then you're like pressing, like, where's the dial tone? Well, same thing. There's a dial tone between your brain and your gut, and it's going through the vagus nerve. And when you lose that dial tone, that vagal tone, then you develop leaky gut, you don't produce enough digestive enzymes. But in the opposite direction, you start seeing depression, you start seeing anxiety. And there's actually been studies done with treatment resistant depression, where they used a vagal nerve stimulation device and electric stim device, and found that people who they had exhausted all remedies, they had tried all types of treatments, medications, to reverse the depression, that using a vagal nerve stimulation device was actually able to reverse I think, up to 30% of people with major depressive disorder.

That's remarkable, like, wow, like something without medication can actually and all you did was stimulate the vagus nerve here in the neck, because it runs down the neck into the GI tract. So it just highlights the importance of maintaining that vagal tone as one of the keys to healthy aging. And there are a lot of fun things that we can do to maintain vagal tone from deep diaphragmatic breathing to sign like, like big, deep sighs of relief and insane. Ha like really producing a vibration here in the vocal cords are humming along to your favorite song or singing in the shower gargling? Yeah. Regardless, there's so many ways that we can activate and stimulate that vagus nerve to keep that underlying tone active, which is both important for gut health, but also mental health. So that that's something I think that a lot of people don't don't know and aren't aware about is that telephone wire between their gut and their brain and how important it is to maintain the channel of communication between the two. And love

Dr. Stephanie Gray 38:42

that I'm putting you on the spot here. But in a recent speak off, I guess you would call it a speak off event that you were in for our health entrepreneur group. i You said something in your presentation that I want to come back to I think you said something about taking one round of antibiotics per year increase the risk of depression, a certain percentage. Do you know what I'm alluding to?

Dr. Vincent Pedre 39:01

I think what I said is that I think the statistics that I had said was that in the last month alone, 44 million Americans had taken an antidepressant and one in five, I think now it's two and five adults report having a mental health issue. Wow. It's something that's really big, it's present. And thank you for bringing that up. Because another thing that I talked about in that presentation was you know, maybe the the next generation of treatments for mental health is actually in the gut using a type of probiotic known as a psycho biotic or bacteria that have beneficial effects on brain health. Because of the secondary metabolites that they produce. Maybe they're producing butyrate or they help lower anxiety in the brain. They might produce GABA, and there's certain types of probiotic bacteria that have been shown No one to do this in studies. One, for example, is lactobacillus plantarum.

Dr. Seven, the Dr. Seven is the particular strain. So it goes from genus species to, to strain. These probiotic bacteria are very specific, different strains do different things. And this one in studies was shown to reduce anxiety in the participants. So really fascinating because I think it starts to open up the question of how we're approaching mental health by treating the symptom using SSRIs, serotonin reuptake inhibitors that increase serotonin at the synapse versus thinking about, well, how can we improve the gut brain connection, so that then maybe the depression can stop the start lifting. And we know that some of these bacteria because of what they produce, they also help stimulate the vagus nerve, so they play a role in that vagal tone that is so important for mental health.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 41:02

Love it, love it, love it. Okay, I want to come back to just some easy take homes for the listeners. So you've already mentioned kind of what contributes to poor gut health as far as what poor vagal tone, taking antibiotics, right eating, eating crappy foods? What are some things the listeners can do now to improve if they don't have a functional medicine practitioner, although I recommend they find one, know who they don't have access to fancy testing? What are some easy things they can do today to help start improving their gut health?

Dr. Vincent Pedre 41:31

Absolutely. Look, number one. Number one is work on your stress. If all you do is just learn to breathe better, like you're going to improve your gut health, you're going to improve your internal state of being, you're going to improve your ability to focus to be present to take in the world around you. So I think that that is number one, because it covers so many bases, like even just learning how to do deep diaphragmatic, breath work, or even box breathing, which is a breathing technique that was developed by Navy SEALs, to deal with stressful situations. And then secondly, meditation, because it's so important. I tell people that breathwork is the portal to meditation. So it's the pathway, because you can't like if you're stressed and your mind is all over the place, how can you sit down and then just start meditating, you sit down, or you walk, you start with breath work. And then once you feel that internal shift, then you can sit down and meditate and shift your mind.

And we know that when you meditate, it shifts the the circulation patterns in the brain, and it activates the lymphatics it does so many things that are good for brain health, but it's also going to calm the body. And it's so important to be in the parasympathetic state of rest and digest in order to have a healthier digestion. You know, just think of when you've been stressed about something, and you've got like a knot in your throat, or you've got a knot in your stomach, and you lose your appetite. Like I think everybody can relate to that. And if you can, then you see there is such a powerful connection between the brain and the gut. And the body does as the brain thinks the brain does, as the body feels. It's a bi directional thing, we can influence our gut, by the way, that the thoughts that we are holding what we're experiencing in our body. So creating a feeling of safety through breath work and meditation, I think is really important.

The other thing that we learned this year from a study done in Stanford University, is that if you want to increase microbial diversity in the gut, and for anybody listening, microbial diversity is like the Holy Grail if you've got microbial diversity, it's a beautiful ecosystem. There's a lot of different players in there, and they help keep things in balance, and they reduce inflammation in your body, which is the common factor in aging and in chronic disease. And what they found in this study was that there were two things that were actually improved by a diet that was high in fermented foods. One was microbial diversity. And two, it lowered 19 Different inflammatory markers. Wow. And that was a diet high in fermented foods. Now if you're not if you haven't been eating fermented foods, don't go out and buy a vat of sauerkraut and then just start like going crazy with sauerkraut don't do what Americans do that is like you know, if a little is good, a lot is gonna even be better. If you haven't eaten fermented foods. You've got to introduce them very slowly. You start with a teaspoon than tablespoon you experiment. You see how it sits with you?

Because it Incorporating ferments can cause die off of bad things in the gut and that die off can make you feel kind of crappy inside. So don't do it all at once. Now, if you want to eat in a way that modulates your immune response that and improves gut health at the same time, you've got to increase your fiber intake. So if we're looking at two ways that we can improve gut health, increase the amount of fermented foods, increase your dark leafy greens, increase your vegetables, incorporate some garlic, some onions into your cooking that have nice prebiotics, dandelion greens, also rich in prebiotics, some of the bitters, all these things are really good for gut health. I'm also a big fan of broth, whether vegetable broth or bone broth for healing the gut. And in terms of nutrients, one of the best nutrients that can basically tip the scales of healing in the gut is L glutamine, which is one of the most abundant amino acids in the body, but when taken as a powder and or you can also take it as capsules, it's just easier to take it as a powder, it helps the the cells that line the small intestine, heal their permeability, so it helps seal up those tight junctions, and reverse leaky gut. It's can be a game changer for people to incorporate l glutamine as part of the gut healing protocol.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 46:31

All fabulous tips I like everything you say makes me want to ask you another question. And I promise we'll wrap this up here. But I want to ask about when you were mentioning eating fermented foods like introducing them to quickly you know, potential is that it that could cause die off that made me think about serum derived immunoglobulins. So do is that something that you support? Are you for them? Can you just explain a little bit about why those are important for gut health and full body health actually.

Dr. Vincent Pedre 46:57

So serve, derive immunoglobulins are coming from cows. And the great thing about them is they bypass the problem that we run into with colostrum or immunoglobulins derived from milk because they can still have some of the milk solids in them. And for anybody who's dairy sensitive that can be problematic. So you avoid that by using an SBIR seven derived bovine immunoglobulin. The great thing about immunoglobulin is it's not going to be absorbed into your circulation. It's actually stays in the gut. There are antibody molecules that look like goalposts and they're designed to bind to antigens. What types of antigens might they encounter in your gut? Well, they might see endotoxin for example, and bind to that endotoxin. And when they do that, the endotoxin now can cross your gut barrier, your gut interface and enter your body. They can also see a whole bunch of other the binding to see if toxins A and B.

They can also bind to CDTs Saito lethal descending toxins that come from E coli, Salmonella, Campylobacter, so they can bind to a lot of different toxins that damages the gut lining and increased gut permeability and increase inflammation. So when you're working with a patient to heal their gut SBI is can be really helpful. If you're treating things like SIBO yeast overgrowth, where you're expecting that there's going to be die off. And in order to kind of dampen the die off effect and protect the gut lining. You can add SPI as as part of the protocol. You might be treating them with spore based probiotic, you might be using antimicrobial herbs, and you're expecting the person is going to have some level of die off especially if they're coming in with a lot of leaky gut related symptoms, lots of mental fog achiness, joint aches, body aches, fatigue, so you can give the patient SPI rise, and that can help mitigate the issue and actually help basically augment the healing process speeded up. speeded up.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 49:04

Did you know that 80% of our immune system resides in the gut. It's true, which means mucosal immunity is one of the most important factors in determining overall immune health. The mucosal barrier is at the center of interactions between the immune system and the outside world. an overabundance of microbes or toxins can and often do overload and trigger negative immune reactions, which have sweeping effects throughout the body. Fortunately, we can protect ourselves with something called SP IgG. SP IgG is the only purified dairy free source of immunoglobulin G IgG. Available as a dietary supplement. Pure IgG helps to maintain a healthy intestinal immune system by binding a broad range of microbes and toxins within the gut lumen. Simply put, when the toxins are bound to SP IgG.

They cannot interact with our immune system, and we're better protected from illness and disease. Free from dairy saturated fats, cholesterol, sugars, GMOs, hormones and antibiotics. sbig is a safe choice for all patient types with over Are 40 human clinical trials for a broad range of patient types? SP IgG is my go to choice to help support the immune cells in our GI tract? This comes in a powder or capsule version, use code IgG for 10% off at your longevity blueprint.com. Yeah, so if we're getting rid of the pathogens or the toxins that are contributing to inflammation and leak, you know, leaky gut, essentially, we remove them, then yes, it's just going to expedite the healing process with the diet changes with supplements like glutamine with stress reduction right? All together for the best outcome. So tell us this has been wonderful. So tell us where can listeners connect with you find you, I know you have a free gift as well. So please share,

Dr. Vincent Pedre 50:42

people can find me on Instagram at Dr. Padre, Facebook, Dr. Vincent Padre, they can check out my website happy got live.com. They can also look at my find out more about the types of consultations that I offer@patreon.com. And we've got a really great gift for your audience. That is actually our most popular free download. It's called the top 10 tips for a healthy happy gut. And it's basically kind of like a quick and dirty Cliff Notes to everything that I talked about in my book happy got all the pearls that are the great takeaways, and really great advice, but also with some recipes for people to be able to make. We get really great feedback from that. So I'm happy to share it with your audience.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 51:29

I want to see that I look forward to checking that out. Thank you. So last question, what is your top longevity tip, if you had to pick one, what is your top

Dr. Vincent Pedre 51:39

I think one of my top longevity picks would be to carve out time every day. To do something that doesn't involve a task doesn't involve work, something that you just truly love. Because when you spend time doing something that you love, say you love to paint or say you you enjoy playing an instrument or you enjoy writing in a journal, when you do something that you love, and you expand on that, that feeling of love. What that then triggers in your brain is a release of oxytocin. And oxytocin is the antidote to cortisol to high cortisol. It basically neutralizes cortisol, and it helps calm the system. So it kind of ties back into the importance of stress management from a fun place, like do something that you really love. I mean, it could be that like, walking on the beach at sunset, you know, if you really love that, that's one of my things. Like I love doing that, that calms me, that brings me into a space of joy. If people can set aside time to do something like that every day, and augment their feelings of joy and happiness. I think that's for me, I think, you know, because it has so many other cascade effects in the body that are unmeasurable, but you can feel them. That is my one longevity tip for your audience.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 53:21

Yeah, that's beautiful. I tell patients do something that brings you joy, like every day, not once a quarter, or once a month, or once a week, like you're saying carve out time every single day.

Dr. Vincent Pedre 53:32

I love that. I love that question. Like, what's the thing you do that you enjoy? That brings you happiness? And a lot of times they're just sit there and just look at me? Like I don't

Dr. Stephanie Gray 53:42

know. Yeah. That's a problem. We got to find something

Dr. Vincent Pedre 53:46

where I go to work, I come home. You

Dr. Stephanie Gray 53:49

gotta find that. Yes. Gotta find that. Well, thank you so much today for coming on the show and really breaking down the gut brain aging chronic disease connection. So this was excellent. Thank you so much. Thanks for

Dr. Vincent Pedre 54:01

having me. Great conversation.

Dr. Stephanie Gray 54:07

Well, there you have it lots of tips to improve gut health starting with vagal nerve stimulation. For more tips check out Dr. Padres free gift happy gut life.com forward slash top 10 tips. That's the number 10 Which we'll post in the show notes. And if you're interested in that DG dairy gluten protect enzyme we discussed in the show, stop on into the integrative health and hormone clinic or we ship nationally. Be sure to check out my book your longevity blueprint. And if you aren't much of a reader, you're in luck. You can now take my course online where I walk you through each chapter in the book. Plus for a limited time the course is 50% off. Check this offer out at your longevity blueprint.com and click the Course tab. One of the biggest things you can do to support the show and help us reach more listeners is to subscribe to the show. Leave us a rating and review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. I do read all the reviews and would truly love to hear your suggestions for show topics guests and for how you're applying what you learned on The show to create your own longevity blueprint. The podcast is produced by the team at counterweight creative as always thank you so much for listening and remember, wellness is waiting

the information provided in this podcast is educational. No information provided should be considered to be or used as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always consult with your personal medical authority

Transcribed by https://otter.ai