“Your Body Is Boss”
This episode is all about gut health, repairing the microbiome, and the benefits of probiotics.
Michael Ruscio is a doctor, clinical researcher, and author working fervently to reform and improve the fields of functional and integrative medicine. With his clinical and research teams, he scours existing studies to inform his ongoing clinical research, patient care, and guidance for health seekers and fellow clinicians around the world. His primary focus is digestive health and its impact on other facets of health, including energy, sleep, mood, and thyroid function and optimization.
Dr. Ruscio’s research has been published in peer-reviewed medical journals, and he speaks at integrative medical conferences across the globe. While actively seeing patients in his clinic, he also runs an influential blog and podcast, as well as a newsletter for functional medicine practitioners.
In this podcast, Why Is Gut Health So Important?, we cover:
- Fiber and Probiotics: Should I Eat More or Less?
- The Link Between Gut Health and Hormones
- Repairing Health After Hormonal Birth Control
- 3 Types of Probiotics for Gut Health
- The Connection Between Fasting and Gut Health
Fiber and Probiotics: Should I Eat More or Less?
We know that probiotics and fiber feed gut bacteria. This dynamic duo sounds like a good thing, and it is a good thing for a proper subset of the population. However, anywhere from 20 to 40% of the population has what’s known as a functional gastrointestinal disorder. These people have bloating, they have gas, they have reflux, and they have constipation. For some people, eating a high level of probiotics or fiber can actually make them worse. In fact, it can flare reflux, bloating, or constipation. In some cases, eating lower fiber or lower probiotics is better for the individual’s net outcome. How do you know if you should eat more or fewer probiotics? Well, your symptoms are the primary barometer; your body is the boss.
The Link Between Gut Health and Hormones
We know that the microbiome helps to detoxify estrogen and progesterone. Also, different gut interventions have a hormone-balancing effect. Some studies have shown that probiotic supplementation can improve the absorption of iron and B vitamins, improving your hormones. Probiotics may support the symptoms of female hormones through detoxification and nutrient absorption. Female hormone symptoms are so routinely improved through gut care. Hormones aren’t the only thing you should pay attention to – it’s always a good idea to look at lifestyle and diet when you are thinking about your gut health.
Repairing Health After Hormonal Birth Control
A history of painful menstruation and birth control for many years can indicate endometriosis. If there’s unresponsive constipation, it can be excess endometrial tissue that’s interfering with the intestinal lumen and stool passage. The longer someone is on birth control, the more likely they will have issues when getting off of birth control. Dr. Ruscio would advocate for the copper IUD because it is non-hormonal birth control. However, if you have been using hormonal birth control for a long time, it’s not too late to get back your health; your intestinal tissue will turn over in about 72 hours. The immune system will take longer to repair, but it’s very amenable to improvement.
3 Types of Probiotics for Gut Health
Dr. Ruscio is a massive advocate for probiotics. All different types of probiotic formulas are beneficial. There may not be a single best probiotic, but categorically, probiotics may work. Find a company that follows good manufacturing practices when selecting a probiotic. Then, use the product for a month and see how you feel. There are three different types of probiotics:
- Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium Blends
- Saccharomyces boulardii
- Soil-Based Blends, usually Bacillus species
If one blend doesn’t work for you, it’s time to try a different type! Learn more about the three types of probiotics for gut health on Dr. Ruscio’s website: https://drruscio.com/types-of-probiotics/
The Connection Between Fasting and Gut Health
Fasting is a phenomenal tool for the microbiome. If you feel okay when you don’t eat, that tells you the importance of fasting. Dr. Ruscio is a huge advocate of fasting. However, it can be overused; sometimes, you must bring it back. If you are starting to have a low mood or fatigue, you may be fasting for too long. Our ancestors didn’t always have food, and they could still thrive. Fasting can be a tool to improve gut health and feel great! If you want to feel empowered on your fasting journey, you need to check out Fast Like A Girl; Dr. Mindy walks you through how a fasting lifestyle can make you live in harmony with your hormones: https://fastlikeagirl.com.
Dr. Mindy
Okay, well, first off, I have to start by welcoming you to the resetter podcast. I actually have been following you for several years. I love your work. So thank you.
Michael Ruscio
So one of the three people. So thank you.
Unknown Speaker
I’m one of the three. And I didn’t even tell you.
Michael Ruscio
It’s a close knit group. And now I know the third of the three. Thank you. It’s great.
Dr. Mindy
Well said well said. So, you know, what I love about your work is that you’ve been really talking about the microbiome before the microbiome was sexy to talk about, like, you had really been diving into a lot of concepts for years on that. So before we dive into two hormones, and and mood and the gut, can we talk just about what’s your Why did you dive in there first, what’s your passion? And why do you think
Michael Ruscio
it’s not a sexy story, but when I was in college, I was you know, your, your, your type a high achiever. I wanted to go into medicine, and I was kind of a burly guys, my advisor said, we’ll be an orthopedic surgeon, because that’s what the burly guys do. And when you’re, what 20. Okay, sure. So I’m trucking along, and I played lacrosse in college, always high energy, obviously Taipei high achieving. And then I fell from grace pretty swiftly, and had to build tating, insomnia, brain fog, food, reactive brain fog, that was just terrible feeling like you couldn’t communicate like you were studying stuttering over your words and low energy, bouts of depression fairly acutely. And nothing else really changed. Right? I was doing all this stuff. I was studying both Holistic Health. And I was pre med. So I was eating slowly and taking walks and getting time outside and getting morning sunlight and eating organic and exercising and meditating and stress managing and sometimes even burning sage in the evenings and all the things. But then all of a sudden, started feeling terribly. And long story short, and ended up being an intestinal parasite. amoeba has political, which I mean, this kill as I know, you know, but this kills people in third world countries due to diarrheal death, because you dehydrate secondary to the diarrhea, diarrhea. And that’s what I had. And I think because I was healthy, it didn’t manifest as super overt digestive symptoms. And so in my case, it was just this food reactive brain fog in the gut just wasn’t functioning well, and fatigue and depression and poor sleep. And so this was discovered by a provider in alternative medicine. And so it diverted my path into alternative medicine and also to have an emphasis in gut health, because addressing that parasite was the only thing that helped me. And before that, I had been looking into things like thyroid or toxins. And there’s all the things that kind of come up quick in a Google search, when you search for fatigue and brain fog.
Dr. Mindy
Oh, yeah, Dr. Google will take you
Michael Ruscio
through all those hoops with well intention, practitioners or protocols. But the lesson I learned was, if you have an active issue in the gut, and you don’t address that, then a lot of those other things are just trying to put the foundation on the house without or putting the top of the house on without the foundation. And so that’s why I’ve been such a big advocate of gut health, for going back now. 15 plus years. And you know, the party kind of eventually came over to gut health being a cool area. And that was nice for me kind of having had my own experience. And having had written a book and done some research, and also have a clinic that centers and gut health, it was really nice to see the recognition that boy like you don’t necessarily need an antidepressant. In some cases, it could be your gut, and what a gift helps someone uncover that. So that’s what I geek out on now.
Dr. Mindy
I love that. Do you feel like the world is starting to wake up to the microbiome? Like we’ve been a little slow to the microbiome conversation? are we gaining momentum with that conversation?
Michael Ruscio
Yeah, we have been slow and I do think we’re waking up both in good ways and bad ways. I’ll give you an example. Good amount of a bad way. You biome, the stool test that was all the rage for years and years. They were shut down by the FBI, due to fraudulence. Now the fraudulence was insurance fraud. And that’s bad. But what was worse was when they looked deeper into the scientific evidence that informed the test, and this shocking, they found that part of what was used to determine if you have a normal stool or an imbalanced stool, was dog poop. They analyzed dog feces to establish some of their normative ranges. So that’s some of the bad with the surge in interest in the microbiome. You have the scientists and the charlatans coming to the table. And for healthcare consumers, it’s really hard to delineate it well, who is the scientist and who’s a charlatan? Because everyone wants to look like a scientist, right? Everyone looked at our science, look at our science look at our science, but you have to really look carefully because if that science was an animal study, a dog, maybe that doesn’t necessarily map on to humans. So it’s great that there’s all this interest. But with that, we have to be a little bit careful, because unfortunately, there are those who are looking to sell a product and they might believe in the product, but the product may not have the requisite amount of scientific vetting to ensure it’s going to help the healthcare consumer.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, I It’s, what it reminds me of is a little bit of the Wild Wild West, it when any new trend starts and it gets really hot, there’s going to be a lot of people doing it in the wrong all the wrong ways. So
Michael Ruscio
it’s a recurring story throughout history. It’s, you know, this happens.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah. And so do you think when you know, this is a concept that I’ve really thought about a lot, is that when I approached my health, what’s more important for me to take into consideration my human cells like, like what my mitochondria need, what my genetics might need, the cellular membrane, you know, what it might need? Or what my bacteria need? Do? You know, we’ve heard 10, more times more bacteria than human cells. But how do I prioritize what the where to put my bacteria? Is that ahead of my cellular needs?
Michael Ruscio
The question you’re asking, it’s such a hugely important question. And different people have different perspectives on this, I’ll give you mine. So there’s these mechanisms that you just outlined, bacteria, intestinal bacteria, maybe intestinal fungus, mitochondria, maybe simulating certain metabolic pathways, right. So there’s all these different mechanisms that we can consider. When we eat when we move when we do anything, when we supplement. If we try to intervene at the mechanism level, what’s challenging about that is we’re not sure if that mechanism is going to end up having the effect of better mood, clearer skin, better sleep, whatever the outcome measure is. So the way I like to look at this is, let’s intervene in such a way that we know is going to change the health of the individual, and put that first, rather than trying to intervene at the level of whatever the mechanism is. And here’s a microbiota example of this. We know that probiotics, and fiber, feed gut bacteria. And this sounds like a good thing. And it is a good thing for a fair subset of the population. However, anywhere from 20 to 40% of the population has what’s known as a functional gastrointestinal disorder, they have bloating, they have gas, they have reflux, they have constipation, something like this, and this broad umbrella term of fgds. And for these people, not for all, but for a fair number. Eating a high level of probiotics or fiber can actually make them worse. And it can flare their reflux, it can flare their constipation or diarrhea or whatever. So if we went to the mechanism, well feed good bacteria, good bacteria, good for host. But if that flares, the symptoms of the individual, that’s not good for the entirety of that, that person. So paradoxically, in some cases, eating lower fiber or lower probiotic, actually is better for the net outcome of the individual. So when we look at outcomes, that tells us when we summarize all the impacts of the mechanism, which one translates to the total good that we’re trying to achieve? So I don’t know if that’s going to nerdy
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, no, how would How would you know what that outcome is? Like? How would you know if you fell into that category?
Michael Ruscio
Right. And so this is where I think working through a somewhat linear hierarchy can help someone figure this out. So you have a few different steps you can take. And then your symptoms are the primary barometer, we say, at the clinic, your body is boss. So we want to really listen to and steward the signals from your body. So let’s say someone comes in, and they have fatigue, brain fog, and constipation, somewhat common symptoms, right? Now, there’s all these different things you could do. But you could go high carb, low carb keto, you could supplement with fiber, you could not supplement fiber. So how do we reconcile where we go? Well, let’s start with food quality first, right? If the individual is coming in, and they’re drinking soda, and they’re eating lots of processed food, which I’m assuming most of your audience is not, but just to acknowledge kind of step zero to one, you start there. Okay? And if they’re at a decent baseline diet, okay. Then from there, let’s maybe consider a low FODMAP diet, if they have digestive issues, because we know that can help for some people, after they’ve gone through dietary step one, which is basic food quality, and you go on that diet for about three weeks, and either your symptoms improve, or they don’t improve. And then you can line up next to that maybe intervention with probiotics, let’s say, but the point I’m making is we have to start making our decisions based around the response out to the individual, not based upon what’s in vogue, microbiome, good high fiber, high probiotic. And that message gets gets out there. And it helps some people, the people who will benefit from that. But it might make other people worse. And so unfortunately, what ends up happening is the healthcare consumer is secondary to what’s in vogue, then what do we say, these things have a time and a place, let’s just try to figure out which one for you in what order so that you have the highest likelihood of improving your symptoms as quickly as you can? Yeah, I
Dr. Mindy
could not agree with that more. And one of the things that I’m seeing just from the perspective that I’m looking at from health, is that a podcast like this, it’s great example, it could either be used to improve your health, or it could pigeon you hole you into the wrong strategy for you. And the problem that we have is we’re looking for the absolute in health and the only absolute your absolute. So it, it’s like, if you can’t do what your friend did, you can’t like if we could sit up here and say, Oh, the FODMAP diet is amazing for the gut, well, maybe that will work for some people, but it doesn’t work for others. So the challenge I have to the public is listen to these podcasts, and then test it just the way you said. And I love that let the body be the boss. Otherwise, we’re going to you’re going down into a path that could be as unhealthy as eating McDonald’s.
Michael Ruscio
Yep. And this sort of thing is helpful just to give people the benchmarks of for most diets by the second week, you’ll notice something and by the third ish week, it’s not to say you’re fully improved, but you’re able to say, I’m feeling better, I’m going to keep going. Or if you’re not time to put something else in line for the next experiment. And that way you can be moving, right? Like, one of the other things we say at the clinic is key patients moving forward, right? We don’t want to have to stagnancy. If it’s not working, let’s keep thinking, let’s keep iterating. But let’s not just come back to the well, you know, you got to give it time like that no clinician, like saying that, by the way. And they don’t say it because they want to say it. But sometimes we’re not sure what else to do. And so I think it is really helpful to keep an individual moving forward. Yeah.
Dr. Mindy
One of my favorite statements is you don’t need motivation. You need momentum. Yeah. And when, when you get momentum with your health, you’re, you’re like, excited, you’re like, what’s next? What’s next? But when somebody’s like, Oh, I’m not motivated to work out? Well, sometimes momentum looks like putting your your favorite workout outfit on. And you’re like, Oh, well, actually, I feel like now. So I would say the same thing is like, if you are if you’re trying to probiotic, or a different diet, like something just to give you that step forward, is going to keep pulling you to some better health place, and then
Michael Ruscio
you reinvest, right, you reinvest a little bit of energy. And now maybe you start exercising a little bit more, and then you know, you have little bit more energy. And that’s what we’re after. Yeah, we’re after that little bit of potentiation that can keep spiraling upward.
Dr. Mindy
That’s right. That’s right. I love the way you phrased all that. So talk to me a little bit about moods in the gut. Because I can tell you, you know, the world that I’m living in is a lot is the hormonal world. And we have it for women over 40, we have such a huge emphasis on Oh, you need to make more estrogen, you need to make more progesterone, we’ve got all the bioidenticals in HRT. But what I’ve been educating my my audience on is, there’s making the hormone, there’s and then there’s breaking the hormone down. And so much of the breaking the hormone down happens in the gut. So could we start with like, what is the purpose of the microbiome in hormonal? Activation?
Michael Ruscio
Yeah, absolutely. Well, we know that the microbiome helps to detoxify estrogen and progesterone. So it does play a key role in detoxification, as the one aspect, there’s another that it’s a little bit more of a clinical observation, but and there’s some early data to support this, that different gut interventions seem to have a hormone balancing effect now, and sometimes it’s hormones, and sometimes it’s things tangential the hormones, for example, some studies have shown that probiotic supplementation can improve absorption of iron, and B vitamins. So it might be that a history of heavy periods, depleted iron, that iron is either low or borderline low. And now that’s causing things like fatigue, and some brain fog and maybe services with their exercise. And so the probiotic may support the symptoms of female hormones through a two fold mechanism, one through helping better detoxify or get back to kind of normal detox. And then the other is with absorption. And it may not really be that the the iron doesn’t help the hormones directly so to speak, but, you know, at the body’s boss level, if you’re saying, well, the probiotic made my depression less and I have better energy than that’s a huge win. So what’s happening is probably multi fold. Part of it is the impact that the intestinal bacteria have on conjugation of hormones and detoxification of hormones. But then there’s this other facet, that’s probably multifactorial, one of which might be nutrient absorption. That also seems to improve symptoms. And this is a thing that, to me is super clear. And even when I was writing healthy gut healthy even though the book is all about, as the title suggests, gut health, there was a chapter on female hormones, because I had seen such an interplay, right, such a connection between women coming in men also, but different category, women coming in with digestive symptoms, and then also female hormone symptoms. And the female hormone symptoms, so routinely improved from the gut care, I wanted to call that out for women so that they can understand the importance of this component to their Hormonal Health.
Dr. Mindy
Oh, my God, I love that. So So let me ask let me put it in real applicable terms. If I get on HRT because my estrogen is low, but I’ve been on 18 rounds of antibiotics and multiple steroids and my gut in eating horribly, my guts a hot mess. Is that enough just to supplement with HRT, or Emma, is it gonna behoove me to start to repair my gut so that actual estrogen that’s I’m ingesting is going to be able to break down.
Michael Ruscio
I mean, I’m obviously very biased here. But I would say it’s always a good idea to look at hormones as more of a cherry on top, and dietary lifestyle and gut health as the foundation. And it’s not by any means shortchange hormones, because direct support can be super important for both men and women in some cases, but in, in an inflamed body, and we’re going to assume if there’s GI symptoms, or some degree of inflammation, just as a presumption hormones, at least in my experience, and there’s some evidence to support this, don’t tend to always do what you want them to do, if they’re being administered into an inflamed body. So one of the ways that we help kind of, improve the milieu for the hormones to work, the way that we want them to, is with this foundation that we termed the diet, lifestyle, and gut health foundations. And now you’re in really great shape to get the most out of your HRT or your bioidenticals. Or even if it’s herbs like dong, dong, qui black cohosh and chase tree, you’ll get even more out of those, at least from my clinical observation. If you’re doing this on top of that diet, lifestyle and go Health Foundation. Yeah,
Dr. Mindy
it’s so well said, because what I’ve, and I’m sure you see the same thing. But if you don’t let me know that it’s really we very much want to reach for the pill. And at some point, it’s like, well, I don’t do medication, but I do do supplements. So they come to doctors, like you and me. And they’re like, well give me the dunk, why give me the mock, I give me the thing that’s going to help my hormones. But we don’t want to do the work with the lifestyle, because that’s a lot harder. So what I just heard you say is like you can reach for those supplements, but they’re not going to be as effective until you do the work.
Michael Ruscio
Yes, and this is also I think tying in with one of your earlier points of kind of getting that initial small win. And this is kind of the art of health care where maybe someone does need the hormones earlier to give them a boost. But then the clinician is going to redirect them toward, okay, now we got to start exercising, right, because we got a little boost with the hormones. But we don’t want to keep stacking on top of you know, we don’t want to hormone our way out of all your problems. As soon as you’re at a point where you’re not depressed, and you have enough energy to do those healthy foundational behaviors. Let’s get into those. So you know, sometimes we can invert the model to meet the individual, but I think as long as big picture, we get the balance right? Then we’ll be you know, experiencing that level of of optimal health that we want to.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, I like that. So when we look at when we look at the female menstrual cycle, the time of of the whole cycle where we have the most amount of hormones is ovulation. And in general, when I look at the characteristics of estrogen, progesterone and testosterone during ovulation, we should feel pretty good because we have all of these hormones coming in in spades. But what I’ve noticed is that there’s a subset of women that don’t feel very good at ovulation. And where my brain is gone is to think that they’re that it’s possible that those are the ones that aren’t, don’t have good good gut health. Have you seen clinically where there’s actually when we have problems in ovulation, there’s a bigger challenge in the gut. And so those hormones are just not being broken down.
Michael Ruscio
Interesting. Yeah, offhand. I can’t So I’ve made that direct connection. But one of the things that we do look for is a history of painful menstruation. And sometimes this goes back to when they were first menstruating in their teens, and they had kind of like doubled over intense pain, maybe they’ve been in the ER for a few times because of that. And then oftentimes, they’ve been on birth control for many years. And we’re seeing them much later. But we make a note of that, because that can be an indication for endometriosis. And in some cases, if there’s non responsive constipation, we’re thinking there may be excess endometrial tissue that’s interfering with the intestinal lumen and stool passage. So I know it’s not directly answering your question I can answer to that question. I have a tight observation, but very painful periods. You know, that’s one of the things we’ll make a note in their chart. And if we go through the diet, the lifestyle, the gut health recommendations, and some symptoms are improving, but there’s still others that aren’t, we might refer out for an evaluation for endometriosis. In that case,
Dr. Mindy
got it. Got it? And do you see a correlation between women that have been on birth control for decades and new symptoms appearing? You know, I would go as far as to say the menopausal symptoms, depression, things that tend to really hit women at 40? Can we can we make a one to one relationship that, gosh, the longer you’re on birth control, the worse that that menopausal journey is going to be?
Michael Ruscio
You know, in terms of clinically, I can’t say we’re not really set up to be examining that data in a clinical context. I think that’s more like a researcher setting where you want to be tracking individuals over time and then looking for, you know, length of time on birth control, and then severity of symptoms, post birth control. And that’s no easy thing to be able to achieve. Right. So I can’t I can’t say that I’ve been able to parse that out of our data. I know, or at least anecdotally, I’ve heard that criticism made that length of time increases the likelihood of there being issues when coming off of birth control. And I think that makes sense. And this is why I’m more favorable if something like a copper IUD, at least from some of the people I’ve interviewed who are experts in this area, in particular, have really advocated for copper IUD or just non hormonal birth control, due to those exact reasons. And then one of the other things I like to tell people kind of, in a similar vein, tangential to this is, okay, we can’t change what’s happened. Let’s just maximize what we have right now. And there’s so much that we can do there because sometimes we will come in and they’ll say, Well, I had antibiotics. As a child, I wasn’t breastfed I was formula fed. And now I have really bad IBS. You know, Am I doomed because of that? And I’ll say no, like, there’s all of these clinical trials that show people with the symptoms can improve, irrespective of their background. Sure, some of these things may increase your risk. But if we have tools to fix that issue, then you shouldn’t look at your past as a prognostic indicator for your future. Yeah,
Dr. Mindy
I’m so happy you said that. Because I think that we really have to it’s, especially in the health movement, we come out and we’re like, this is bad, and this is bad, and this is bad. And the patient, the person listening is like, okay, what can I do surround like, wrap myself in a bubble? And, you know, I think, then when you like, look at how you live, where I live, you would see pretty quickly, we’re not deprived. So we’ve all had bad things in our past, and we’ve stepped into healthy lifestyles with the gut, how quickly does the gut repair
Michael Ruscio
very quickly, I mean, the intestinal tissue will turn over in about 72 hours. Now, the immune system in the gut is another issue. And that may take a little bit longer, but very, very amenable to improvement. Yeah. And just in response to anything that you said, I think this is important to keep that in mind regarding diet, because it’s so easy to research all the things wrong about diet. Dairy is a problem for some people. Gluten is a problem for some people fatness are a problem for some people. salicylates are a problem for some people. histamines are a problem for some people, right? oxalates are a problem for some people lectins are a problem. And then what can end up happening is people have a really contorted relationship with food. And they are and this is kind of one of those downward spirals, right? We described the upward spirals earlier. So now someone could be under eating, and also withdrawing from social opportunities. Because at a dinner out, right, how much control do you have? So they’re under eating? They’re socially deprived, they may not be sleeping well, because they’re under eating. And all this starts to really snowball, and it can be so freeing. When someone says, Hey, like, let’s open up your diet. I don’t think you have a problem with gluten. I don’t think you have a problem with dairy. I don’t think you have a problem histamine or at least you can have some right like, yeah, go out, go to a dinner, Be social. You’re not going to ruin your health. If you eat off plan a little bit. Yes, let’s focus on food quality 70 80% of the time. But then you can also have a life and it’s important to have a life and just that shift for some people, they will literally come in and report higher mood and vigor and Well Being from that one shift.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, amen. I am so in alignment with you on that I feel like we need to live life and eat healthy. The idea is not to become rigid around each one of these pieces. The idea is to be playful and curious about what would it be like if I avoided gluten 90% of the time, but then what does it feel like if I add it in 10%? To have, we need to be a little bit lighter, how we’re approaching the dogma of health of alternative health care? I was if I don’t know another way to say it. We’re not necessarily I don’t think you and I think of ourselves as alternative but of natural healthcare. You know, we can get really Orthorexic. Right. That’s that’s a literal term that showing up. So, yeah, and what do you think like, how would somebody know if they had a gut problem? Because I think it’s surprising that it’s not just constipation?
Michael Ruscio
Hmm. Well, there’s the obvious digestive symptoms of the short list would be constipation, diarrhea, bloating, abdominal pain, reflux could be another feeling like something stuck in your throat, also known as eosinophilic, esophagitis, could be a third, fatigue after meals could be another. If there’s a history of anemia, that’s another that could potentially mean impaired gut health. But then there’s all these what’s known as extra intestinal manifestations of poor gut health. And this is where you can have something like food reactive brain fog, you can have issues with your skin, so pimples lesions that have no known cause, you’re gonna have this paradoxical joint pain, I have a sore neck here, or that you can’t really tie to a workout or to a thing. Mood imbalances, mood swings are another big one. Yeah, insomnia is another. So what I like to say is, because there are so many causes for a symptom, let’s say like fatigue, it’s better to again, come back to kind of this linear, progressive hierarchy of intervention. And look at, okay, if we know that maybe up to 40% of people have issues in their GI. And let’s say hypothyroid, which affects about, you know, the, the stats here are debatable, but if you’re going to be sort of conventional in your diagnostic criteria, about point 3% of the population has true hypothyroidism. Now, you can debate and say maybe it’s closer to one, whatever, right? Maybe it’s 4.6. Maybe it’s even higher, but that’s still very different from up to 40. Right? So if we’re going to say, Okay, which one comes first, we’d say, look, let’s look at gi health first, before we consider something like hypothyroid, or mitochondria. So they have a time and a place, but we have to rank order them according to probability. Yeah. Because, like me, fatigue, brain fog, insomnia and low mood, no digestive symptoms. Right. What I did, what I did was, went to heavy metals, and thyroid, and I got was a last op. In fact, the doctor who said, he thought I had a good issue. I was like, but I have no godson. So it’s those cases, that I’m, like myself, most passionate about helping people understand that if you’re having these symptoms, you haven’t figured out why yet goes through a couple of gut interventions, a couple of light experiments, like you said, with your gut health, and see if the needle moves, because from a probability perspective, those are fairly common to be the causative factor of something like fatigue or brain fog or mood swings. And are
Dr. Mindy
there like a few gut interventions that everybody should do that are just tried and true that everybody should do?
Michael Ruscio
Well, I’m a huge advocate for probiotics. Okay. Oh, podcast, every month on probiotic research, I’ll select about 10 studies we we monitor, every time a study is published on probiotics. We monitor the research feed, and some are noteworthy, some are not but then we’ll do a podcast one per month, usually on the top 10 to 12 studies published in the past month on probiotics and what you see in this research feed is things like necrotizing enteric colitis in infants improve with probiotics, all the way up through some studies showing that cognitive decline in elderly improved from probiotics. And in between you see resolution of SIBO you see improvements in thyroid hormone medication absorption. You see in pregnant female hormones symptoms. You’ll see some reductions in alpha amatory authorities. So because there’s all these benefits, plus the gut benefits, I think, a probiotic, a good trial, and the clinical dose of probiotics is one of maybe two or three cornerstones of those gut experiments.
Dr. Mindy
And does it matter which probiotic you take? Because that’s a whole Wild Wild West.
Michael Ruscio
Yeah. Well, yeah. So here’s the long short on this. There’s kind of two camps of thought. One camp that says, while the research is interesting, we don’t yet know what the best probiotic is. Therefore, we need more research until we can recommend a probiotic. And I get where that’s coming from. Right. But probiotics are not invasive, they’re not expensive. So we may be, we may be on to kind of this witch hunt to find the best probiotic. Because when you look across trials, you will see that for the same condition, let’s say constipation, all different types of probiotic formulas have been shown beneficial. So what that tells me is, there may not be a best probiotic, but categorically, probiotics may work. So now if you’re gonna be Uber, Uber, Uber scientific, you won the really large randomized control trial with over 1000 individuals. And you found that this one probiotic was the best like a drug trial. I don’t think it’s ever going to happen with probiotics. And because we’ve seen, again, so much uniformity and improvement across different conditions. Find a company that follows good manufacturing practices that you know, you know, is going to be snake oily, try the recommended dose, and use that for about a month and see if you feel the needle move. Now one, one tip I’ll equip people with, in case one formula that you try doesn’t sit well. The way that we break these down is into this three category system. The first is a blend of lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium. This is like your VSL three, you are really popular probiotic VSL three, this biome, just a blend of lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium. This is the most researched type most traditional, so that’s type one. Type Two is actually a fungus. This is Flora store, or saccharomyces boulardii AI. So that’s another type of probiotic that you could trial. And then the third is this newer kid on the block. You have a few different formulas megaspore prescriptive cyst, it’s, they’re they’re a combination of bacillus. It might be bacillus subtilis, Bacillus, Lich and formless. But that’s your third type. And what can elude some people is one of those for whatever reason, may not sit well with a person. So they try a probiotic. And they just don’t feel well the entire time. And then go well, probiotics aren’t for me look on the label, right? Identify which one of those three was the one that didn’t sit well with you. And then try one of the other two, chances are very likely that one of these three will move the needle. And you want to discover that and then keep going with the one or even the two that do
Dr. Mindy
if you that was so well said thank you, you actually cleared up something to my own head. So I really I really love that. But how do we know if it sits? Well, because the way I was always trained is if you take a probiotic, and you start getting diarrhea or you know, you get constipation, it could be a sign a die off of the bad bacteria. Do we still believe that? Like how would I know if it’s working? Well, for me? Yeah.
Michael Ruscio
So it’s great question, really important question. And it’s, it’s the length of duration of that turbulent response? That helps answer this. Okay, great. Usually, if it’s something like a hexamers, or a balancing reaction of some sort, that’s going to last for anywhere from two to maybe four or five days. And then it should abate. Got it. So we tell our patients at the clinic, and this is in our materials for probiotic recommendations. Also, if you get to the five ish day mark, and things aren’t getting better, it probably tells you it’s an intolerance. And this applies to many herbal medicines also. Because we want to distinguish between rebalancing Herxheimer type reaction versus intolerance never going to be good for you. And it’s the length of time so again, usually around 234 or five days you’ll see that wax and wane if it’s adjusting, if it persists, then move on to something else.
Dr. Mindy
I love that and do you believe in mono culturing? Like do we need to worry about changing up our probiotics so that we don’t keep growing just one subset of bacteria
Michael Ruscio
or Yeah, I don’t think we have adequate research to accurately answer that question. But there’s a few trends in the IBS. So looking at irritable bowel syndrome is one model to tell us how to intervene for optimal gut health. There’s some studies not all agree on this, but some studies indicate that the higher the diversity of the probiotic, meaning the more strains might actually equal a better outcome. So this is why we recommend what’s known as triple therapy, where ideally remember, those three categories will have someone take, let’s say, two capsules from one bottle, two capsules from the other bottle, and two capsules from the third, just to have the broadest sort of support for the gut. I don’t think that rotation matters, you can make an argument for that. But, and this is my inference. But from an immune perspective, I think consistency of stimuli tends to be beneficial. And part of this is taken from again, this inferential but there’s some data that if you grow up on a farm, you have less allergy. But if you just visit a farm, that can flare your allergies, because the immune system tends to calibrate to what’s present in the environment in an ongoing basis. Okay, so with that constant exposure, the immune system can kind of attune. But if it’s just episodic exposure, then that may be more prone to lead the immune system to react again, that’s, that’s an inference. But this is why we favor more of a broad spectrum probiotic, used continually. And then this is the other kind of, I think, important time point piece. Once someone has plateaued, meaning they’ve improved, plateaued, and they’re stable for about two months, then we try to wean them off or find the minimum effective dose.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, cuz so the idea is not to be on it forever.
Michael Ruscio
The idea is to not be on anything forever, unless you qualify to get your body’s boss, right. So I use a probiotic most of the time. And I can’t say I noticed a lot when I go off of them. But what I had noticed was, if I go off for a dinner, have some wine and kind of say, whatever, with the food. That’s what I notice, you know, bowels may not be as great. So little, little things, right? Nothing major. But through some experimentation, I noticed, okay, I’m gonna do a probiotic. You know, maybe most days, if I travel, I don’t worry about it. I take breaks periodically. I’m not obsessive about it. But what I noticed was, the probax were really helpful at first. And they give me a little bit of an edge, sort of in the long term there, I wouldn’t say they’re needed, but they helped keep me from kind of not being an average. And I feel like my GI functioning at optimal, but the goal is to be minimalistic, because I’m positive you see this, what we call supplement creep. Just all the supplements from every blog, you read and video, you watch and all sudden whole. We have to periodically go through and try to weed out things that we no longer need, because over supplementation is a serious problem.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, I would agree. And I actually believe in supplements cycling. Because otherwise, I mean, ultimately, you want your lifestyle to do everything. And so either you cycle in with certain supplements you cycle out. But I would agree the goal is not to just move everybody from medicine to supplements, really we want to create some lifestyle changes, which which leads me to wonder if we look at something like sauerkraut or rocky for how does that compare to a probiotic.
Michael Ruscio
The doses in something like sauerkraut, kombucha kimchi, they’re quite a bit lower than what you’ll see in a probiotic, you’ll get anywhere from 1/8 to 1/4, of one capsule of a probiotic, is what you’ll find in something like sauerkraut, kimchi, so it’s something and it’s good. And it’s something from a dietary perspective, I’d recommend an ongoing basis. But it may not be enough. If someone has an active gi issue, it may not be enough to fully kind of get them over that hump alone. And to your other point. I do agree with supplements cycling kind of once we’ve gotten through the clinical woods, I wouldn’t say like, while we’re trying to troubleshoot something to Gi, we try to see if it’s working, let’s like keep it going. But then when we’re on the back, and that’s when I think you make more of a case and especially for something like A B complex vitamin or something like that as a hedge. That’s when I really agree with you. And I liked the concept of just periodically going on a bottle.
Dr. Mindy
Yeah, I’ve just found it you know, the body is always adapting. So you’re just continually kind of surprising it and keeping it fresh and and moving in a growth phase. So last, something that was really been deep on my mind is last summer, there was an art, some studies that came out that said SSRIs were not considered to be the end all be all that we originally thought they were and that depression wasn’t necessarily equated to low serotonin. Where does the microbiome fit into that? Because the problem I think we have with studies like that is it’s just all in isolation. Like, it might be that maybe somebody’s microbiome is making more serotonin. And so they do an SSRI, and it doesn’t really help and other somebody else is really, microbiome is not making enough serotonin, and the SR, Sr, i is going to really bring that up. So talk a little bit about serotonin neurons.
Michael Ruscio
So much, so much to say here. We did a video breakdown on that study recently, also. So if you haven’t seen it, you may enjoy it. But so that study, it was an umbrella meta analysis, meaning it was a meta analysis of meta analyses. A meta analysis is a summary of clinical trials, right? So there might be a few 100 clinical trials that can be summarized in a meta analysis. In this case, there’s so many datum on SSRIs, the meta analyses, there were so many of those, they were summarizing an umbrella meta analysis. So it’s an incredibly helpful type of study and extremely good way of getting a preview of what the science says. But it wasn’t answering the question are SSRI or similar medications? Effective? It was looking at? Is there a correlation between serotonin levels and depression? These are two different questions, right? We say on the one depressed people, let’s measure you what’s going on. That’s one, that’s what this study did. On another type of data would be okay, depress people, let’s give you medications and see what happens. That’s not what this study did. So this study great data, but it did not disprove the medications have any merit, it did find that there was no correlation between serotonin levels, and depression. Now, when we were reading the study, we also wanted to say, well, let’s be fair, even though I’m not, excuse me, even though I’m not someone who is a big advocate for drug therapy, I always try to be objective, and if the therapy works, then people should know about it. And what do you know, the men analyses looking at interventional trials with SSRIs or SNRIs? Find benefit. So we should just report that, but there it is. Period, it could out now. Yeah, they could help. Now, again, would I recommend that as an initial therapy? No. But might there be someone who’s in a really tough place? And for whom they need a win? Yes, right. So I think it’s really important to report in these data, objectively. And then coming back to kind of in a hierarchy, there are at least one, or there is one meta analysis that found probiotics can improve depression, and also a similar meta analysis, finding it pro bass and improve anxiety. In that video breakdown that we did, we compared the effect of sauna therapy, to drug therapy on what’s known as the Hamilton depression index. And drug therapy lead to a two point reduction and sauna therapy led to a four to six point reduction. Wow. So that’s pretty now I should be careful to say the drug study was a meta analysis. And the sauna study was one small clinical trial was not exactly an apples to apples. But it was just to impress upon the viewer, that there are many methods that can improve your depression. Exercise would be another right. So yeah, I would definitely say that the diet, lifestyle and gut health foundations play a big role in depression. And within that, the lifestyle piece would be exercise and sauna. And then absolutely, if those things don’t land fully, hormone support can be really helpful for mood, as I know, you know, very, very well, especially for women, but also in men. If there’s low mood, then hormones can be really helpful. And the hormones do impact the neurotransmitters. But maybe that’s not the mechanism, right? Maybe it’s something else that the hormones are doing. That’s improving mood. But there does seem to be a connection. But yeah, so sorry for the diatribe, that Oh, no.
Dr. Mindy
I love it. I love it. Because this is something that I’m 53 and I’ve been thinking a lot you know, I entered into my Peri menopausal years very healthy, and found out that there was a lot I did wasn’t doing for my health to make to be able to adapt to the loss of hormones. And one of the surprising things for me has been the mental health piece because I’m typically optimistic and energized and clear headed. But as estrogen has gone away, I’ve seen dopamine go down, which I know estrogens are a precursor for both dopamine and serotonin. Yesterday I read a study that said oxytocin can’t even be used as much by the brain when estrogen Islam. So, you know, you look at a 53 year old woman who’s trying to live a really healthy lifestyle, but you’re naturally losing these hormones that are affecting the neurotransmitters. What do we do for that woman? And where does the gut come into play in that scenario?
Michael Ruscio
And this is one of the areas where and I wonder if the sort of ancestral and naturalistic framework through which I examine many topics, breaks down to some extent, because I’m assuming that even though we both live really healthy, we’re probably working more than our hunter gatherer ancestors did. In the book, civilized to death, Christopher Ryan broke down that hunter gatherers, on average work four hours per day, and I’m not working four hours per day. I’m not sure if you are, and kudos to you if you’re only working four hours, so they double their meat. So there may be this Okay, let’s look at ancestral practices. For all these things. We can learn circadian health, diet, movement, community exercise time in the sun, but then also realize that we’re in a different environment. So there may be some dials, we have to adjust slightly to try to allow us to thrive in this environment.
Dr. Mindy
Oh my gosh, I love that. So okay, so where did sauna come in? Where did the sauna come in, in the ancestral world? And you know, like, I when I look at, like, weighted blankets, and chilli pads that that, you know, a lot of when menopausal women are, are using, you could actually go back and say, well, the cold and lowering your blood, your your temperature is a little bit primal. They slept on the ground and the ground what could have been possibly cold? They had animal high, right? Yeah, they had animal hide. So maybe that’s a weighted blanket. So where did that where does the sonic come in? Yeah.
Michael Ruscio
You know, a good question. I don’t know that I’m assuming there’s no hunter gatherers who are doing sauna. But I think it sort of pushes a little bit more aggressively the concept of not having a thermal regulated environment, meaning when it was hot, you’re hot, right? It wasn’t summer, and it was 100 degrees, you’re walking around, maybe you’re in the shade, right, but you’re not able to thermo regulate your environment. And that’s, you know, so I do think it fits, we’re just pushing that to a little bit more of an extreme to get an even higher degree of health benefit. But with the way at least I tried to embody that in my day to day life is I do sauna I do cold plunge. And then I try to minimally, thermo regulate my environment. When it’s summer, I try to keep it a little bit warmer in here, when it’s winter, I tried to use the heat minimally. And it is amazing how much your body can start to be able to shun blood better to either throw off heat or conserve heat. With all these capillaries and muscles, you have to direct blood flow in the periphery. So it’s on is a it’s an ancestral concept sort of taken to a more techy extreme. But the data on Sonne, I think a really compelling in terms of brain health, cardiovascular health, reducing all cause mortality, I think a sauna is one of the best investments that someone can make. Because they sit there and you can also invite friends over I have a barrel sauna. And it’s become sort of a focal point for you don’t come over and you just broke up with you, you know, your your girlfriend or you know, you had a fight with your spouse or your top business stuff come over, we’ll do a song and we’ll talk and it’s wonderful.
Dr. Mindy
That’s so infrared versus just good old fashioned, you know, he doesn’t matter.
Michael Ruscio
We wrote a an article comparing the two. And even though my bias and my preference is toward the traditional sort of, you know, coil heater with rocks, the data can be pretty equivalent in terms of the health outcomes. Now, if you’re someone who likes to get hot, and you’re maybe a little bit more of an intense person, right, if you’re intense leave exercise and you kind of like to push things, then I think you’re only going to be happy with a traditional sauna because they get a lot hotter than infrared. My sauna is at the 230 I’ll set it at about 210. And so it’ll oscillate between 202 10 and that’s a really good sweat and you come out of there and you can just feel like man, the circulation has been potentiate the heat shock proteins and then brain derived neurotrophic factor all that’s going on and I feel great. Infrared, it’s a little bit more mild. And for me not as fun but you know for some people that may be your preference so
Dr. Mindy
and so is it up regulating neurotransmitters? Is that what the depression piece is?
Michael Ruscio
Good question. I’m assuming I haven’t actually looked into that. It may have been one of the we fact check so many things in the article. We do know that it improves mood and slows neuro degenerative decline. One of the mechanisms is through similar to when you exercise you have this brain derived neurotrophic factor Get circulation. And then some of these compounds like BDNF, which helped to fuse better connections between your neurons. I’m assuming there’s some modulation of serotonin and dopamine, if not, I mean, there’s definitely catecholamines, which are going to increase to increase the heart rate because my heart rate, I’ll try it with my Garmin watch. And once I get to about 130 BPM, that’s when I’ll get out. And there’s catecholamines like adrenaline and cortisol, that are going to help facilitate that.
Dr. Mindy
It’s so fascinating to me, because in all, and I’m sure you have this in your podcast, that each conversation I get into, I start to see that the modern world has really taken us so far off course, from our health. And one of the ways to find our way back is to ask what our primal ancestors did, with a few modifications to your point, and I had never ever thought about temperature regulation. You know, I fasting is my passion. And I’ve been all talking about that, as far as our ancestors did that, but the thermal regulation is really interesting. Is there a connection to that? And the microbiome, like, does the microbiome need that seasonal change in in temperature in order to flourish?
Michael Ruscio
Great question. I haven’t seen any research on this, there may have been something published that we’ve missed. But if we look at heat exposure, similar to exercise, and I can say, from a beats per minute perspective that I track with my with my Garmin watch, I mean, 130 beats per minute it like, you know, do cardio, and you’ll see that you’ll be 130 BPM, a lot of that time, if you’re lifting weights, you got to be pretty vigorous with your weightlifting to hit 130 BPM, so I’m just painting the connection between sauna and exercise. And we do know that sedentary people who start exercising, see improvements in the health of their microbiota. So I’m assuming there probably is some favorable benefit from sauna. I don’t know that that’s been studied just yet. But it’s probably one of the many studies with all the studies coming in the pipeline, and microbiota research and there’s some research. And you’ve probably heard of Wim Hof, the guy who hiked Everest in a bathing suit, he’s been able to document in other people in a college university study setting, that his technique of breath work and cold exposure reduces overzealous immune activation. So that ties in with the gut, because what can happen in some conditions, maybe an IBS, definitely an inflammatory bowel disease, is your immune system starts attacking good intestinal bacteria. So the cold exposure may help sort of attenuate this, this overzealousness of the immune system or, or may help give your immune system better balance.
Dr. Mindy
Oh, my gosh, you’ve given me like a deeper level of thought on some of these things that I’ve already been like, my mind has been like, this has been amazing. Okay, I have to ask you one more question. Before I ask the final one. Of course, I got to ask you what you think of fasting for the microbiome.
Michael Ruscio
Fasting can be a phenomenal tool, especially if someone is symptomatic. Oftentimes, patients will come in and say, I feel okay. If I don’t eat. It’s like, great. Well, you know, that’s not a long term Bible strategy, but it tells us how important it is to have some points of fasting. So yeah, I’m, I’m a big advocate for fasting, I do think it can be overused. And so sometimes we have to kind of bridle it back. And I’m sure you’ve probably discussed this, that if you’re starting to be low mood or fatigued or not sleep well or get dizzy, then that can either be too much fasting or too low electrolytes or both. But yeah, I think it’s, you know, coming back to the ancestral concept, we didn’t always have food. So another evolutionary pressure that we evolved underneath, and I could do well to sort of replicate that as best we can. Yeah,
Dr. Mindy
I love I hope everybody else like this conversation. But this was, you gave like concepts that I’ve been really thinking about it, you gave some new context to it. So I just, I really appreciate that. So before I go into the last question, where, where can people find you because you have a clinic in Austin, and you’re actively seeing patients and you have an amazing book and amazing podcast. Where else, where’s the best place to send people to?
Michael Ruscio
If you go to my website, there’s two websites. There’s Dr. Drew show.com. That’s the main website. And then the clinic is Rougeau institute.com. And my last name is our US CIO. If you just search Michael Rucha, you can find me pretty easily. But yeah, we have clinical practice with a small research team, myself and three other doctors and then on the other side of the world at Dr. risha.com podcast book, and a bunch of educational work there for people and yeah, shouldn’t be too hard to track me down there. I’m trying to do some more on social media. I’m not great about it, but trying to post more there also,
Dr. Mindy
it’s an animal social media is like a big, big animal. Yeah. Not Want to go there. Okay, here’s my last question has nothing to do with the microbiome, at least I don’t think it does. Our theme for this year for our podcast is self love. Do you have like, nurturing practices that you do every day? And if so, what are they? And then the second part of that question is, what do you feel I’m really trying to get people to highlight what our geniuses are? Do you have superpowers that you’re like, Yes, this is my superpower. What would those be?
Michael Ruscio
Well, the superpower I think is just obsessing over health and figuring out how to solve the equation of an individual’s health care. And I was the first one. And I’ve always been someone who I think some people are tuned in to how they feel. And other people are a little bit more detached. And I’ve always been very tuned in. And it served me well, it serves me well in clinical practice, because a lot of what you’re trying to do is just read the signals from someone’s body to reveal what they need to thrive. So I think that maybe OCD along with a selfish desire to be as optimal as I can have come in coalesced together to help people. And then in terms of self love practices, I have a whole slew, I’ll just give you a few. Every morning, I go in my coal tank for about five minutes. So I have outdoor shower. So the shower outside is brisk and cold, then I jump in the coal tank, it’s super invigorating. And then I’ll make an espresso. I’ll do a walk around the block, and I’ll meditate. And then I’ll start my workday. So that’s a really nice way to kind of start the day with a lot of, you know, invigoration and some caffeine and some movement and some time outside and then a meditation to kind of steal me and focus me then right into the day. And then in the evening, I’ll do sauna and cold tank contrast. So I’ll do about 15 minutes at 200 degrees, jump in the coal tank for about a minute, and then go back and do two rounds. And also exercise every day. I usually around midday. Yeah, so those are a few things that I do that are really helpful. And I don’t have a TV, maybe one of the things on the board, I recently moved, and that gave me an opportunity to get rid of the TV. I do have an iPad. But what’s nice about the iPad is it’s small. So it’s discouraging of watching TV. And what’s been beautiful, is it’s not just the I’m on the couch, lay back and had the big TV there. So that that like junk food in the cabinet of convenience for the TV is no longer there. And I find myself listening to music more. And it’s such an amazing exercise for your brain. Because when I lay back and listen to music, I’ll say, No, I haven’t called my mother in a couple of days, I should probably call her and ask her about how she’s doing with EQ. So all these things that are in your subconscious have a chance to come through, because you’re not just being passively entertained by television. So that’s maybe one of the things has been a recent discovery that’s been really helpful. Just to have that time in that space. To think about how to be a better person or you know, things that you want to do like, oh, remember I said I was gonna do that trip? I never did. Why didn’t I? I don’t know. I’ll do it. Right. So yeah, there’s a few ramblings hopefully.
Dr. Mindy
I love that. That was that was actually such a good answer. I really appreciate it a lot, a lot of thoroughness. And you know, what I think is I do the same thing where I have a morning time and an evening time like they anchor my day. Yeah. And what’s really exciting is when the you know, I wake up in the morning, I know, this is what I’m going to do. I don’t have to think about it in that kind of hazy state. And at the end of the day, I have the same thing that I know what I need to do to wind down so I absolutely love that. Well, Dr. Rocio thank you so much. I really appreciate you come in and just happy to be one of your three followers. So yes. Great conversation. Let me send you a picture.
Michael Ruscio
I think you get a little plaque up here with the with the three in our audience. But no, it has been a great conversation. I really appreciate you and your perspective and the questions. And hopefully this has given people some insights on where they can move this really important dial of their gut health.
// RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
- Feel the impact of Organifi – use code PELZ for a discount on all products!
- Fast Like A Girl
- Cured Nutrition – use code PELZ for 20% off your order!
- Michael’s Podcast
- Healthy Gut, Healthy You Book
- Civilized to Death
- Infrared Sauna
Great podcast, as always. The part about issues caused by long-term birth control really resonated with me. I was on BC for 30+ years and when I came off them at 48 my body went a little haywire. Chronic hives were intense, overwhelming, and scary. Saw my primary care, my gyn, and even an allergist. Had all sorts of expensive tests by a naturopath. None of them had a clue of the cause or what to do other than anti-histamines forever. Fortunately, I wandered into an herbalist shop on my 50th birthday and the owner pointed me towards liver-cleansing herbs. After about 6 weeks the hives subsided. In 30 years NONE of my doctors ever said anything about issues I might have with birth control.
My experience though led me to start learning as much as I could about menopause and what was next for me in my hormone journey. I feel very blessed the issues weren’t worse than they were, and that I’ve found resources on how to be my healthiest self. Now I’m eating and fasting for my hormones and feel amazing. I’ve even learned to like sauerkraut. ;-)
Thanks for bringing us ways to do that!