Season 6, Episode 1: Optimizing Gut Health and Healing with Dr. Vince Pedre

Evelyne: Nice to see you too. It’s been a long time. So in this episode, we’ll explore the critical role of gut health and overall wellness, talk about the personalized approach outlined in Dr. Pedre’s books and strategies for optimizing gut health. So before we go into it, what is lighting you up this week?

Dr. Vince Pedre: Oh, God. You know what? It’s really what’s lighting up California. These fires, and I know that’s maybe a little bit opposite, but it’s really moved me because I have friends who potentially lost their homes. And I think it’s just bringing me back to the gratitude of the things that we take for granted. Just having shelter like a home to come home to, a place like for me, my home is a sanctuary. And sorry, when you said light up, the first thing I thought were those fires that are engulfing LA. But really, what lights me up is having an impact. And I think that’s not just this week, it’s every week. It’s what I do, it’s what keeps me motivated.

And I had a message from a patient who follows me. I haven’t seen her in years. She left my practice because I dropped insurance and she’s like, “Can’t afford you.” But she follows me from time to time and she commented on one of my stories and I decided just to ask like, “Hey, how you been? How are things?” She said, “You know what? Dr. Pedre, all that advice that you gave me that I didn’t listen to, it finally sunk in and I started listening to it. Lost 20 pounds, feeling better than ever, is setting healthy boundaries,” because one big thing for her was… And the thing is, I mean for anybody who’s listening, I know I’m talking to other practitioners, our work is not limited to what diet should you follow, what supplements should you take. I look at the whole person, and a lot of times I realize a lot of people, part of their health journey is they don’t know how to set healthy boundaries.

And the symptom is in everywhere. They don’t know how to set boundaries with sugar, but they also don’t know how to set boundaries around people, family members. And that was one thing that she told me and that really lit me up this week to get that message from her and realizing, because our job is thankless. A lot of times, we’re just doing this because this is our passion. This is what we feel is why we were born was to help other people. But the truth is, most of the time I’m not getting thank yous for what I do.

And to hear a patient that a lot of times I felt frustrated because I felt like I was a broken record, I would tell her the things to do and then she would come back a few months later and still be at point A, never having followed any of my advice, to hear her say that it finally sunk in, that lit me up because that’s a reminder that don’t forget that even the patients that we think aren’t listening to our advice, it’s trickling in somewhere. It’s trickling in. And when they’re ready, when it’s right for them, that’s when they’re going to listen.

And that’s just like a reminder. It’s like raising a child. The gratification is not immediate. The gratification comes over the long run. And with patients, it’s like we just have this whole herd of children that we’re caretaking and we’re helping them maximize and optimize their life and their health, but our impact goes beyond the time that we actually spend with people. And sometimes even if people leave, it’s just a good reminder that if you’re always showing up with the intention in your heart to do good for other people, the power of that intention transcends time, and that lights me up.

Evelyne: Thank you so much for sharing that. That’s beautiful and so true. And I also want to acknowledge what you said about the L.A fires. It’s just heartbreaking and devastating, seeing the destruction in people’s lives are forever changed because of this, and it’s a heavy week for sure witnessing all of that. And now, it’s a little weird to transition from that, but I do want to get into your expertise on gut health. So before we go any further, just a little background, Dr. Vincent Pedre is the medical director of Pedre Integrative Health and founder of Dr. Pedre Wellness. He’s the CEO and founder of Happy Gut Life. He’s a functional medicine certified practitioner and has had a concierge practice in New York City since 2004. He’s the bestselling author of two books, and his most recent one is The Gutsmart Protocol, which is a culmination of years of research and clinical experience as a functional gut health expert. So I’d love to hear a little bit more about your backstory and your own gut healing and how you became so passionate about gut health.

Dr. Vince Pedre: It goes all the way back to childhood, and I think like a lot of our stories, and I’m sure anyone who’s listening to this can probably hear pieces of their story in it. Having been on so many rounds of antibiotics as a child, I’ve calculated that it was 20 plus rounds of antibiotics between the age of 10 and the age of 19. During the ’80s and ’90s when I was growing up, antibiotics were prescribed as if they were like, you might as well just add them into our water. Antibiotics were just considered like, yeah, it’s okay to take an antibiotic. Nobody was thinking about the consequences of those antibiotics and why a teenager kept getting sick over and over and over and needed antibiotics. But not just that, I became rail thin and even though I was eating probably anywhere between 3,000 and 4,000 calories between the cereals, the milk, the sandwiches, the pizza, the pasta, the ice cream, the desserts, the cakes, all of that, I could not gain weight and I could not put on muscle mass.

And that was such a source of despair for me along with my being ultra skinny, getting sick all the time. I partly just wanted to go to medical school to figure out how do I not get sick? Why am I getting sick all the time? And I can’t say this that I knew this back then, or even when I was in medical school or even when I was in my residency training because nobody there, there was no teaching around this until I discovered functional medicine and could look back and realize that those antibiotics decimated my gut microbiome. They led to leaky gut.

We now know from studies done on mice that within 24 hours of an antibiotic dose, that the tight junctions start to disassemble and you start getting leaky gut. So imagine having been through that multiple times per year and then having my gut microbiome decimated, dysbiosis, overgrowth of bad bugs, leaky gut, developing wheat and dairy sensitivity. So I was gluten and dairy sensitive, intolerant, and yet I didn’t know, and I just kept eating bread, pasta, cheese, ice cream, milk, milkshakes. My mom used to take me to get a vanilla milkshake. I’m embarrassed to say this, we used to stop at Burger King to get a vanilla milkshake on the way home from school every day. And you wonder why my immune system was shot and I just kept getting sick over and over.

And so, part of my journey, I just didn’t realize that the gut was going to be central to this big question I had, which was what’s wrong with my immune system? It wasn’t what’s wrong with the immune system, it was what’s wrong with my gut and what’s wrong with my gut lining that has led to an overwhelmed immune system that just can’t keep viruses and other bacteria at bay to the point that I used to when I was a teenager, my mom used to take me to a clinic and I can’t imagine that they do this anymore, but we use these types of things now to help people heal, like serum-derived bovine immunoglobulins, SBIs. Well, back then, when I wasn’t responding, it got to points where I wouldn’t respond to an antibiotic. I was taking an antibiotic and I was still as sick as I had been, lymph nodes swollen, not being able to breathe, sinuses. And she would take me in to see the doctor and they would inject me with pulled gamma globulins, so from blood donors.

Evelyne: Oh, wow.

Dr. Vince Pedre: So I would get a gamma globulin shot, and I hated it because as a kid I didn’t want anything to do with needles. But the thing is, within 24 hours of getting that gamma globulin shot, I felt like my immune system was back in line. Obviously, I was being given other people’s immunity. I would feel amazing within 24-48 hours, but no one was stopping to ask, why is it that we have to give this child who’s not responding to antibiotics external pulled immunoglobulins and that resolves the infection. It all came back to the gut and it came back to diet and it came back to a lot of things that we just weren’t taught in medical school back when I went to medical school in the 1990s.

Now, I was curious because my diet slightly shifted at the beginning of medical school and my dairy consumption dropped partly because I just didn’t have the time to sit around in the morning and have cereal with milk. I had to rush out the door to classes. Classes started at 8:00 in the morning, so my dairy consumption dropped, and I noticed that I wasn’t getting as sick as easily as I was before. And even though I wasn’t being taught this and we didn’t have a lot of nutrition training in medical school, but I grew up in a house where my dad was nutrition obsessed, and actually back in the ’80s had been to some crazy doctor at the time, “crazy,” that had done food allergy testing and my dad had this whole list of foods that he couldn’t eat on the refrigerator.

So even though we were eating the wrong things still, and there wasn’t still a bridge being made between, okay, my dad’s allergic to these things, maybe the kids have problems too. But the idea of it had sunk in and I started noticing that I was eating less dairy, I was getting less sick. Maybe there was something to that. And that was the beginning, I think of my trajectory into looking at ways outside of medicine, outside of standard western medicine that could explain or even resolve the way I was feeling and that was my big motivator.

Evelyne: Wow, what a story. And I think that your story is at the same time, not uncommon for so many people. And unfortunately people discover so much later all of these things that they could have done or they don’t get the right help or their doctor just doesn’t know. I think even now in regular medicine, which you were trained in, I think that doctors are aware, but then it’s like, do they actually know what to do about it, and I find that very difficult. So I’m curious about, you’ve written two books on gut health now, so I’d love to know what are the premise and why did you write a second book? I’m sure it came out of seeing so many patients in your clinic. Talk to us a little more about that.

Dr. Vince Pedre: First book was inspired by becoming an accidental gut expert because when I got into functional medicine, and first I was like, wait a second, you mean that this unpredictable gut, this having to run to the bathroom sometimes after eating out, this upset stomach is something that I don’t have to live with for the rest of my life and I can fix these things and I can actually… I didn’t realize also that the fatigue that I was feeling, that I attributed to working 12-hour days in the clinic, 10 to 12-hour days, and I just felt like a zombie by the end of the day that I thought was just because I’m an overworked doctor. I didn’t think that it actually had to do with my gut and that it had to do with inflammation until I started really working on my gut. And then, when I figured out that gluten was an issue and took gluten out of my diet, the burst and energy that I had within two to four weeks after taking gluten out of my diet and not feeling like I was crashing in the afternoon like I used to, was amazing.

Getting back to the book. So I became what I consider, because I just started working with patients who had gut issues or whenever patients came in, I just really started to zero in on those gut issues and noticing patient comes in with gut issues, they have eczema, they have migraines, they have mental fog, they have fatigue, or they have allergies or autoimmune disease. And you start working on the gut and you start seeing that things are getting better in surprising ways that would not be expected, especially coming from a traditional western training. So I was getting into functional medicine and I just kept getting, I fixed a patient’s gut and they were referred a friend, they referred a work colleague, they referred, they’re like, “Can you help my family member?” And my practice just started building from that.

And I just started thinking, okay, this is the tip of the iceberg. If I’m seeing this, and there’s so many people out there with these types of symptoms, everybody is suffering from gut health issues. This is back in, I started imagining my first book in 2012, the month after my mom passed away and losing my mom made me think, what am I doing? And not just what am I doing, but how can I have a bigger impact? And I realized then that I was really zeroing in on gut health. I had my own story of my gut healing journey that this was the book that I had been waiting to write for over six years, and I didn’t know what the book was. And after my mom passed, I had this moment of just intense clarity where I realized that the book that I’ve been wanting to write because I wanted to write a book forever was the one that was just right under my nose, literally under my nose. Here, my gut.

And working with all these patients, I wanted to create and formalize what I had been doing, how I had been working with patients and create a 28-day program that could be done by anyone without having to see me so they could improve their gut health. And that was the inspiration for my first book, Happy Gut.

Evelyne: And then what about the second one?

Dr. Vince Pedre: So the second one, I think you could imagine that after Happy Gut published and I was on Dr. Oz, then I was on Good Morning America and I had a New York Times feature article, my phone was ringing off the hook and I got so incredibly busy, I started seeing so many gut cases. And of course, when you become popular, then you start seeing the more difficult, you start with the easy and then you go, you start getting the ones that no one has been able to figure out. And by working with gut patients, I started realizing that depending on the level of gut dysfunction, you couldn’t prescribe the same diet, and look not to knock the health books out there because there are some really brilliant and great health books that have had an amazing and powerful positive impact on people’s lives, but a lot of the books out there are a singular plan. Go keto, go paleo, do this. It’s one diet plan to fix an umbrella problem. And what I realized when it comes to gut health, it’s very difficult to say there is one plan that fixes everybody’s guts.

So that was the beginning idea and inspiration for The Gutsmart Protocol. I decided, well, I need to come up with a book that has three different plans based on people’s gut health. And in order to do that, I need to devise a quiz that can not only tease out gut health issues, but tease out gut-related health issues. Because over the years, I also had patients that had minimal gut symptoms but had a ton of gut-related health issues. And when I did stool PCR testing and looking at different gut biomarkers, you found that they had parasites, they had inflammation, they had leaky gut, and yet they had normal poops and they had no gut symptoms.

So you couldn’t trust just going by the gut history whether a person needed some sort of gut healing. So I came up with this quiz that asked a bunch of questions that covers all different systems and it’s scored and depending on the score, call it the GutSMART Quiz in my book. The person is divided into mild, moderate, or severe. And a really good example of this is if someone has severe dysbiosis, severe gut issues, it’s going to be really difficult for them to tolerate fermented foods. And yet we all think about, when we think about gut healing, fermented foods are a key part of gut healing, but they’re not right for everybody.

If you have mast cell activation, if you’ve got a completely disordered gut microbiome, fermented foods aren’t going to sit so well. And I wanted to make sure that I had a plan of action for patients who fell under that category, but then also a way to move them along and just taking my knowledge and experience and putting everything together. The Gutsmart Protocol is almost the book that I wish I had written first, but I just didn’t have the experience to do that.

And I couldn’t have written the Gutsmart Protocol if I hadn’t done Happy Gut first because I think the Gutsmart Protocol brings everything together. But if I were to put them in order, the Gutsmart Protocol should precede Happy Gut. But I also wanted to bring in a lot of the gut-brain connection stuff and talk about the vagus nerve and how the vagus nerve affects gut health. Because over the years, I’ve realized that nervous system regulation, especially regulation of the autonomic nervous system, is a key essential part of healing the gut. And if you can’t get that part dialed in, it doesn’t matter what you do with diet and what you do with supplements, if you can’t get the stress component dialed in, you’re not going to make headway in all the other parts and the person’s just going to keep hitting a wall and their gut is going to maybe get a little bit better, but it’s not going to get better the whole way. And the missing ingredient was the brain.

So I wanted to include that in my new book and really highlight the importance of breathwork meditation of ways to activate the vagus nerve. And that’s why in part four of the book, I have what I call turbocharging your results, but it’s really like, I think people still want to believe that it’s diet and lifestyle first, but for some reason they put meditation, breathwork, stress relief, self-care activities as something that they do last. They’ll do that once everything else is good, I’ll do that. And really, what I wanted to do is bring that forward and say, “No, this and this.”

Evelyne: I think it’s hard when somebody is in that state or like the freeze state, not even fight or flight but freeze, to make some of those changes. I’m curious with your patients, what are some of your favorite vagus nerve techniques that you recommend?

Dr. Vince Pedre: Very simple one that I teach is the humming breath. That’s one of my favorite ones, just getting them to set a timer. I like to teach people how to breathe deeply first, to understand the role of the diaphragm. A lot of times I’ll have patients breathe for me without giving them any instructions. And I’m going to say 99% of the time when I say, “Take a deep breath,” they go like this. They’re breathing up here with their neck muscles, their accessory muscles. They’re not using their diaphragm, they’re trying to keep that belly in because we have this distorted view of beauty in our society where the belly has to be tucked in, but it’s really bad for the nervous system.

Babies know how to breathe. They know if you ever see a baby take a big breath before they bellow out and start screaming and crying, their belly expands, they use their diaphragm, they know how to breathe. And then somehow, somewhere as we’re growing up, we forget how to breathe. I think most adults are not breathing correctly. So first teaching how to breathe, and then using that deep breath, adding in humming. A lot of times, I have people lie down and bend their knees because it’s, or put a pillow underneath the knees because then it’s easier once your belly is relaxed to practice diaphragmatic breathing, set a timer, and then with every exhale, hum on the exhale, which actually does two things. The humming, the vibration here in the vocal cords activates the vagus nerve as it traverses on either side of the voice box. So that…

And I almost think of it like, you know how cats purr? And the purring frequency is anywhere between 15 hertz and 150 hertz or 25 to 150 hertz. And when cats purr, it’s like a healing frequency. If you’ve ever had a cat on your lap and you feel it purr, like I grew up with cats, when they were purring, it’s really calming. So humming is the human way to purr like cats and to bring that healing into your body through that vibration. So one, it creates a vibration that activates the vagus nerve, and then two, it also prolongs the exhalation. And by prolonging the exhalation, you’re slowing down your heart rate, you’re calming your nervous system, you’re creating that space, that pause that is necessary to be able to activate that autonomic nervous system and get into ventral vagal.

You also mentioned that freeze state, which is part of polyvagal theory, is the dorsal-vagal response where you’re, you can’t do anything, you’re depressed, you don’t want to get out of bed. And even for that, they’ve shown that vagal nerve stimulation can reverse even treatment-resistant depression, not all of it, but it had a 37% response rate, whereas these patients were not responding to any medication, even dual medication, and then they use a vagal nerve stimulator and they got a 37% response in people who had treatment-resistant depression. But we have our own built-in vagal stimulator by humming.

Evelyne: That’s a great reminder.

Dr. Vince Pedre: I just have patients set a timer. I think anyone can do five minutes. Ideally, I’d like to work up to 15 minutes or 20 minutes, but 5 minutes, anyone can find. I can’t tell you how many times people tell me, “Well, I don’t have time in my day.” I’m like, “Well, how many times do you waste five minutes that you could have used for something else? Don’t tell me you don’t have time in your day.”

Evelyne: Yeah, I think it’s very important, the vagus nerve. So I’m curious about the sequence of how you guide your patients through a protocol. And I’m sure that it’s unique, but generally, because I think you just mentioned you start with the vagus nerve, but do you start with diet supplements? When we look at a five-hour protocol in functional medicine, is that what you follow? Do you work on gut barrier integrity first, or do you go and fix dysbiosis first? What’s your plan generally?

Dr. Vince Pedre: It highly depends on what’s going on with the patient, starting with a very thorough interview and even just from their picking up the patterns, the possibilities, usually after the first meeting, before any testing has been done, and depending on the patient, because some patients are going to walk out your door and run if you tell them that they can’t eat gluten anymore and other patients are going to be okay with that. So depending on the patient beginning some sort of diet protocol from the very start, very much tailored to that patient and what their symptoms are and what I think they can do. And it’s really important to have this be a co-created reality, not just a prescriptive reality. So for me, I’m asking the patient, “What can you do? These are the things that I think we should do. How much of this can you do? Can you jump all in? Are you ready? You’re going to just go all in. Let’s do a carnivore protocol for example, or do we need to tiptoe our way in because it’s just going to be so overwhelming and it’s too much for you?”

I had a patient who started with me almost six months ago and she was drinking soda, but she was also having other things that were refined carbs. And the first meeting I said, “Look, can I make a deal with you? Can you reduce your soda by one soda?” Because she was drinking I think four per day. So I said, “How about if we reduce for the next two weeks until I see you next every couple of days, you’re going to reduce it by one can. So by the time I see you next, you’re going to be down to one.”

And sometimes I think we have to do things that way to make it not feel like such a shock for people. You got to read the room. You got to read your patient. You got to understand what are their capabilities. What’s going to have them leave your office feeling empowered and what’s going to have them leave your office or your virtual appointment and feeling overwhelmed like a deer caught in the headlights? If I told her, no, tomorrow you have to stop all soda, no more. She wasn’t going to do it. And I possibly would’ve lost her as a patient. But I said, “Let’s do…” She knew it was wrong, so at least I got the buy-in. She knew that this wasn’t right for her. But then, we negotiated and we made a deal. When I saw her next, she was down to one can per day. She kept her part of the bargain.

So I’ll start with a diet protocol that’s based on the information and the detailed history that I’ve taken in the moment. And then, anyone who’s working with me one-on-one rather than like, “Hey, you read my book, the 28-day program and just go and do the program or the Gutsmart Protocol.” I’m doing testing. I’m looking at their gut, I’m looking at gut biomarkers, gut microbiome, seeing if there’s dysbiosis, yeast overgrowth, parasites. And when they come back, then I’m instituting a gut protocol. And depending on what’s going on, if they have Giardia, if they have Entamoeba, then we’ve got to deal with that parasite immediately and first before we can start doing other things. I like to start to work on things like improving the gut lining. So even with any of those protocols, I might already be starting a serum-derived bovine immunoglobulins, for example, at the start of a protocol because I also know that putting them on an antimicrobial for the pathogen is going to cause die-off. Maybe it’s going to release more toxins. So I want to provide a binder at the same time.

However, if I’m dealing with a patient that’s constipated, then you have to be really careful with the binders like the SBIs because they’re going to cause constipation. So there, I like using a powder, or maybe sometimes capsules, but making sure that I explain to them we’re going to start at a much smaller dose. You’re not going to use the whole scoop. And we’re going to figure out what’s the sweet spot where it doesn’t cause constipation, but I know it’s helping you because it’s binding toxin. It’s helping improve the integrity of the gut border. It’s binding endotoxin, it’s binding cytolethal distending toxin, so other things that need to be dealt with in order to heal the gut lining. And then, introducing gut healing nutrients like L-glutamine, like Aloe, DGL, all those things, zinc carnosine.

Evelyne: Speaking of the serum bovine immunoglobulins, since you’ve brought them up a few times now, I just saw a study that was published last month in which they gave five grams per day to, it was in 18 patients, but they had either IBS or IBD, and they actually saw that it acted as a prebiotic, so it actually had an effect on the composition of the gut microbiome. So I thought that was really interesting another way in which they have an effect on our overall gut health. And I’m curious with the dosing in your patients, do you sometimes start at a higher dose with people? Because I know some people will do two scoops twice a day and then titrate down after a period of time, whereas others will start low and slow and then go up from there. So I’m curious how you do that in your practice.

Dr. Vince Pedre: It completely depends on the patient. And again, going back to the constipation issue, especially since I work with a lot of women, and women tend to teeter on the edge of constipation, you have to be really careful with that because you could really tip them over. And then, you’re dealing with a patient who’s very constipated, which is not a happy patient. But if a patient is more on the side of IBSD or mixed IBS or inflammatory bowel disease where they’re having a lot of diarrhea, then I’m going to start them at a higher dose and then titrate them down as they get better over time because they’re going to need that higher dose. And one great thing when somebody’s more on the diarrhea side is I’m watching the consistency of their poop, the quality of their bowel movements, the ease of their bowel movements, because the SBIs are going to have an effect on all those things.

Evelyne: I haven’t heard as much feedback about constipation, but it’s good to know. But thankfully, when it comes to constipation, we also have so many things, so many tools in our toolbox to help with that as well.

Dr. Vince Pedre: Yeah, sometimes you have to balance those things out. And personally, I’ve experimented with taking and not taking SBIs myself, and I’ve found that I actually feel better when I’m taking a dose of SBIs every day.

Evelyne: I have heard that feedback too.

Dr. Vince Pedre: It’s almost like an insurance policy against whatever toxins might be in my gut or maybe what I’m exposed to through food. So when I make my morning cup of coffee, I’m putting the SBIs in my coffee as part of my brew. So it makes it a good way to remember to keep it in my daily habit is I just add it on to something that I’m already doing and using a milk frother, it’s very easy to get, have it mixed in with a coffee, which sometimes it’s a little bit hard to mix it with water, but it’s just a good way to remember to take it every day.

Evelyne: I haven’t tried that, but you’re reminding me of a testimonial that somebody shared with me who also said the same thing. She didn’t really have gut issues, like apparent gut issues, but took it every day and just felt overall better, which does make sense because she’s probably the person who has some underlying gut stuff, but that’s manifesting as something else rather than an outward problem with the gut, like gas or bloating or pain.

Dr. Vince Pedre: The SBIs can give you magic poops with less wipes.

Evelyne: I don’t know if we’re going to keep that.

Dr. Vince Pedre: And who does not want magic poops that don’t require too much wiping?

Evelyne: We’ve never talked about poop in this way on the show, but there’s a time and place for everything. I want to talk about something else that you’re passionate about, which is microplastics. And thankfully, now I see that so many more people are aware of microplastics and we know that we shouldn’t microwave food in plastic. I think that most of us have not been doing that for a long time. But then I think about the microplastics in my Trader Joe’s stuff that I buy, and I feel like so much of it is really unavoidable.

Dr. Vince Pedre: You can’t heat it in the container. You got to take it out of the container and heat it in its own plate.

Evelyne: Which I do. But I wonder, don’t they pour the food probably when it’s heated into the plastic container? And even not pre-made things, but just everything. When I buy turkey, when I buy beef, it’s all wrapped in plastic. And I feel like, I mean, we’ve discovered them in polar bears. It’s just unavoidable, which is really, really depressing.

Dr. Vince Pedre: The microplastics are getting into the organs, getting into the brain. And there was a study that came out, it’s recent, but it’s I think a couple of years old now, where they found that there was a connection between the detection of microplastics in the stool and the severity of inflammatory bowel disease. And they found that people who had inflammatory bowel disease were more likely to have high levels of microplastics in their stool.

Evelyne: Interesting.

Dr. Vince Pedre: Now, obviously this is not a cause and effect type of study. It’s not a randomized clinical control study, but it does bring to question like, okay, is there more to microplastics than what we’re thinking? And we know from studies done on mice and zebrafish that the microplastics cause the overgrowth of bad bugs. They disrupt the gut microbiome and they also disrupt the mucopolysaccharide layer that protects the gut lining. And once you disintegrate the mucous layer, then the next thing you’re getting leaky gut, more inflammation, and you’re absorbing these endocrine disrupting chemicals that are getting into all tissues and causing havoc with hormones.

But the thing is, I think a lot of people know, don’t microwave something that has a plastic container, don’t put that in the microwave, but it’s the micro habits that we do because they are so normalized that we’re not thinking about them, like picking up a coffee on the way to work and getting it in that to-go cup and then putting a plastic top on top of it, and then drinking that hot coffee through that plastic top and not thinking about the microplastics that you’re getting exposed to through the lining of the cup and also the plastic top. And it’s those micro habits that I think have the biggest impact on our health and the things that are indolent because it’s so normalized.

And I’m going to raise my hand and say, I’m guilty of picking up coffee or matcha on the go and taking it to the office, or when you’re traveling in the airport. And I’ve changed my habit, I’ve started carrying my own canteen and I’ll bring it to the coffee shop and just have them fill my coffee in my own cup, which is great now in the winter, because not only am I avoiding toxins, but the canteen keeps the coffee much hotter for longer than their cups do.

Evelyne: Yeah, I was going to say I’m guilty too. I do get a lot of coffee at coffee shops, and there’s so much great coffee around in San Diego, and even when I try to avoid drinking it through the plastic top, but I know that the cup is on the inside is lined with it too.

Dr. Vince Pedre: Still getting exposed to microplastics.

Evelyne: Yes, I know. And it’s so difficult. I have a question, and I know that you recently launched a coffee product, so I want to try it, but I have a question. I think a lot of people know not to use K-cups for coffee, like what you find in a-

Dr. Vince Pedre: And yet a lot of people do because K-cups are super convenient. You just take the cup, you put it in, pop it, and you’ve got your coffee in a few minutes. And honestly, I don’t think it takes much longer to do a pour over coffee. Maybe it takes a little bit more work, but I’ve had people ask me if I’m going to make Happy Gut Coffee available in K-cups, here’s the coffee.

Evelyne: Look at you.

Dr. Vince Pedre: The answer is no because I don’t want you using, one, a machine that has plastic. You’re running hot water through plastic, then the hot water through the K-cup. Also, it’s burning the coffee as it goes through. You’re not going to get a good quality coffee as you can if you heat your own water and do a pour over. And it’s just overall not great for our health. I think if you were drinking a K-cup per day, it’s like eating a credit card per week.

Evelyne: Oh, gosh.

Dr. Vince Pedre: Do you want to eat a credit card per week?

Evelyne: That’s crazy. Okay, so I have a question. What about Nespresso machines? Because I’ve looked into them and I feel like I think the reservoir where the water is is still plastic. So is that a problem too?

Dr. Vince Pedre: And also the pods. I would have to look at if they’ve updated what’s inside the pod, if it’s just made out of aluminum. But the thing is that you’re just not getting as good quality coffee as you could otherwise. Plus the acidity of the coffee, the strength of the coffee beans, the way they’ve been roasted and prepared, it’s much better, if you can, to buy whole bean coffee and grind it right before you drink it at home. You’re just going to get a much better flavor profile. But also, it just bypasses a lot of these things. And you can just use, I use a pour over method, and I actually, for me, it’s part of my morning meditation to wait for the water to seep down through the filter, and it’s almost meditative to watch the water go through the coffee beans, and then I add over, add some more. You’re getting a much more complex flavor because of the contact with the water.

And if you were drinking my coffee, Happy Gut Coffee, which is a dark roast, it’s low acid, it’s USDA organic, it’s free of microplastics because you’re not going to make it in a K-cup. And it’s also free of pesticides and mold, which are also other really big important items to think about because coffee is among the top 10 most pesticide sprayed crop on the planet. And then, anywhere between 20%, 90% of coffee beans are going to be contaminated with mold depending on where their sourcing is, the quality of the coffee. If you think you’re saving money by buying a cheap coffee online, you better think again because the reason it’s cheap is because they’re using lower quality beans.

Evelyne: Going back to the microplastics, I’m curious, is there anything that you recommend to your patients to do, aside from just obviously minimizing our exposures, is there anything we could take to actually minimize the detrimental effects? And I think about this a lot because I’m sure that you have noticed this in your practice because I talk to practitioners every day in San Diego. People are sicker than ever. Something seems to have happened in the, well, I think post COVID, where everyone is just sicker than ever. And I just wonder, well, I think it’s a combination of everything that we’re exposed to, but it makes sense with that gut-brain immune access, that all of these things are having a detrimental effect on the gut, which is then affecting our immune system, and I don’t know what to do about it.

Dr. Vince Pedre: And scrambling our hormones. So liver detox optimization, supporting phase one and phase two liver detoxification is super important. But also getting people to sweat, and particularly if they can use a far infrared sauna and spend time in the sauna several times per week, or if they have a far infrared heater, like a portable sauna that they can use, it’s a great way to detoxify the body, is to sweat these things out along with supporting phase one and phase two liver detoxification. Using amino acids like glycine, L-glutamine, NAC, all of these things, super important to help the body dump these xenoestrogens. And then working on the gut microbiome because the gut microbiome also helps us metabolize these xenoestrogens so they don’t get absorbed into the body. But if you have a dysbiotic gut microbiome, you can actually absorb more of these xenoestrogens. So looking at the gut microbiome, seeing if a person needs to be on probiotics, working on the integrity of the gut lining.

So like anything, it’s not just one thing that you can do. And yes, the first and most important thing for any of these environmental toxins like microplastics is reduce your exposure, look at all of your different behaviors and see where is it that you might be exposed to microplastics, even through feminine hygiene products, and see what is it that you can change in your behaviors. It takes a little more planning to carry your own coffee tumbler to the coffee shop, but remember, it’s those micro habits that create the macro effects that we have to deal with in our lives. So if you can change those micro habits, you can have a big impact when you sum that up over a year’s time.

Evelyne: Yeah, that’s such a great reminder.

Dr. Vince Pedre: All of that.

Evelyne: And I feel like the detox conversation is one that we have often in functional medicine, but maybe we don’t always talk about it when it comes to gut health because there are so many parts to that. I’m curious, my last question to you before our rapid fire questions is what are some cool emerging trends or research that you’re excited about right now in gut health?

Dr. Vince Pedre: I think that one thing that we’re just at the tip of the iceberg and understanding how do we translate a gut microbiome signature to what it means for people’s health and how they can eat. And I think there are companies out there that are trying to do that, but I don’t think we have enough data yet to really fully understand. The other area of research that I think is pretty fascinating, and there hasn’t been a lot of work done on this because it’s not like you can patent a drug, but looking at the anti-stress diet, like the psychobiotic diet, like the way that we can eat, that’s going to affect the gut brain access. And by affecting the gut microbiome, it can actually reduce stress, reduce the anxiety response, improve the mood.

I think we all know this in functional medicine that there is this connection between the two, but there haven’t been a lot of studies on what type of impact can we have by instituting a psychobiotic diet. There was one study that was done in Ireland, and they looked at a control group that was eating the Irish food pyramid, maybe a lot of potatoes, I don’t know. And then, the other group was eating what they called a psychobiotic diet that was rich in fermented foods and prebiotic fiber-rich foods. And they found that the group that was in the intervention branch, and this was only after four weeks, they took what’s called the Cohen’s Perceived Stress Score. And they looked at them before and after, and the people who were in the diet intervention group, their stress score, and this is without any psychotherapy, none of them were in therapy, none of them were on any other types of psych medications. Their stress score dropped by over 33%-

Evelyne: Wow.

Dr. Vince Pedre: … in four weeks just by the diet change. And I think we need to dive into this further because I’ve had, for example, a friend of mine who is bipolar, and she did the Gutsmart Protocol. She followed the program, and she found that the cycling was much less, still on medication, but much more responsive and not having the really big highs and the very low lows. And that all went through just changing the diet, like transforming the diet. And unfortunately, there’s not enough money that goes into research on how different functional diets can affect health outcomes. And I would hope that because of just the high rates of anxiety and depression, this is the skyrocketing in the world that we would start looking at the connection between diet and mental health.

Evelyne: Absolutely. And you’re reminding me the upcoming Designs for Health CASI Conference is on mental health this year in October in Austin, Texas. So keep that in mind. We’ll be talking about it more. Thank you so much for sharing all your expertise today. I do have just three rapid fire questions for you. What are your three favorite supplements for yourself?

Dr. Vince Pedre: Okay. I’m going to say one of them is copper, because I think that copper is actually helping me preserve, actually, I think my hair got darker because I’ve been taking copper now for almost two years, and see no grays in my eyebrows. Actually have one hidden gray here. So that’s one. Second one, I got to say is the SBI, the serum-derived bovine immunoglobulins, because my gut just feels better taking it on an almost daily basis. I might miss a day or two every week. And let me think. Third, I really taking and feel better with nitric oxide support.

Evelyne: Great.

Dr. Vince Pedre: That would be, I mean, I could say there’s a tie there with taking supplements to help with mitochondrial energy, but I actually feel quite great just having cold showers and working out regularly and waking up early and getting enough sleep. So I don’t take that much mitochondrial support because I think my lifestyle supports my mitochondria.

Evelyne: That’s wonderful. And you just the next question about your favorite health practices. And then, final one, what is something-

Dr. Vince Pedre: Working out is big. Working out is super big, and I love working out in the morning before I’ve eaten anything. Although lately, because it’s winter, I feel like I need a little bit of an extra push. So I’ll drink my Happy Gut Coffee first and then go to the gym.

Evelyne: Nice.

Dr. Vince Pedre: And anybody, I know you didn’t ask me this, but if anybody wants to learn about this, they can go to happygutcoffee.com. Super easy to remember.

Evelyne: Wonderful. Thank you. And what is something that you’ve changed your mind about through all of your years in this field?

Dr. Vince Pedre: I mean, I always knew that managing stress is important, but I think I’ve moved it to more front and center. Like I was saying, that regulating the nervous system response I think is a primary key important factor in the healing process. And a lot of times we do everything, but we put that last and I think we need to bring that first and then do the other things.

Evelyne: Yes. Excellent point. And I, along with probably many people, every time you said stress or talked about breathing, I’m like, “Okay, put my shoulders down,” every single time. I got to work on that too. Well, Dr. Pedre, thank you so much. It has been a pleasure having you on, and thank you for sharing all of your expertise with us today.

Dr. Vince Pedre: It’s great being here, excited for the upcoming year and the CASI Conference and mental health and all the good stuff that we have coming.

Evelyne: Absolutely. Thank you. And thank you for tuning into Conversations for Health today. Check out the show notes for resources from today’s conversation. Please share this podcast with your colleagues and leave a review, follow, rate on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, on YouTube. And thank you so much for designing a well world with us.

Voiceover: This is Conversations for Health with Evelyne Lambrecht, dedicated to engaging discussions with industry experts, exploring evidence-based, cutting-edge research, and practical tips.