We are excited to bring you a fascinating interview about our microbiome with Pedram Shojai from Well.org this week! Tune in to understand how our microbiome is the ecosystem of our lives. You’ll learn how your gut health affects your immunity and mental health. And the new fascinating discoveries being made about the bacteria in our tissues and organs and how they support healthy function. You don’t want to miss Pedram’s tips for ensuring you tend a happy healthy microbiome. It all starts in 3...2...1!

 

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Dr. Pedram Shojai is a man with many titles.

• He is the founder of Well.Org, the NYT Best Selling author of The Urban Monk, Rise and Shine, and The Art of Stopping Time.
• He’s the producer and director of the movies “Vitality,” “Origins.” And “Prosperity.”
• In his spare time, he’s also a Taoist Abbot, a doctor of Oriental medicine, a Kung Fu world traveler, a fierce global green warrior, an avid backpacker, a devout alchemist, a Qi Gong Master, and an old school Jedi bio-hacker working to preserve our natural world and wake us up to our full potential.

 

The Ecosystem of Life - Your Microbiome

• Science has now shown is that we are much more intimately connected with all the life on the planet than we ever knew through the bacteria, viruses, protozoa, nematodes, even parasites that live inside our body.
• There's RNA and DNA that we can now analyze on these bugs and understand how they support many human functions.
• These functions are actually attributed to these bacteria that are co-existing with us. The word is symbiosis. All of this life in and around us is part of what makes us human and without it, we collapse, and we fall ill.
• If you don't have proper gut health and you're not supporting the life inside of you, there are entire systems that are collapsing that are leading to inflammation and chronic disease.

 

Where It All Begins

• The first inoculation of our microbiome is as we come through the birth canal.
• 30% of mom's breast milk are these oligosaccharides that get secreted by mom. They are indigestible by baby. They're specifically designed to feed the bacteria in the baby's gut.
• Now fast forward here, you need to eat the fiber, vegetables, phytonutrients, and all these things that these bacteria eat, not for you but for the bacteria.
• If we put them first and understand how to feed them, they take care of us and in turn we get less illness, less chronic disease, we have more energy, things work.

 

Every Tissue, Every Organ In The Body Has Bacteria Associated With It

• Researchers found that women with tumors in their breasts had a different mix of bacteria living in the tissue compared with women who did not have tumors.
• The research team discovered for the first time that healthy breast tissue contains more of the bacterial species Methyl bacterium.
• It is blowing the doors open on everything we know about medicine and this is just the beginning.

 

The Microbiome and Your Immunity

• About 70% or so of our immune system is around our guts, it's called the gut associated lymphatic tissue.
• The bacteria are acting as the sentinels between the outside world and the inside world and telling the immune system that everything is good.
• You can't heal if your immune system is constantly battling and that all starts in the gut and that all has to do with how the microbiome is informing the immune system to either attack or to relax and it will do so based on what is in there.

 

What Lifestyles Are Destroying Our Microbiome and Causing Leaky Gut?

• Standard American Diet
• Not enough prebiotics to feed the good bacteria.
• Food allergies like gluten and dairy.

 

Why Leaky Gut Matters

• Once you start creating inflammation and tears in the lining of the gut, there are food particles that will sneak through and the immune system says, "Hey, you're not supposed to be on this side."
• It will start to create antibodies to those food particles as foreign invaders.
• This is how food allergies are created.
• Creates systemic inflammation throughout the body.

 

How to Improve Your Microbiome

• Work with a Functional Medicine Doctor.
• Analysis of your microbiome. You look at how we need to eat and ‘who’ we need to feed.
• Include indigestible fiber in your daily diet.
• You consume a variety of fermented foods and prebiotic foods with every single meal and you adjust for feeding the bacteria that help you thrive.
• Reduce sugar in your diet. By bringing down the bacteria, specifically like the yeast and bad bacteria that thrive on sugars in particular, you'll start to notice a difference very quickly.
• Increase fiber intake.

 

Benefits of a Healthy Microbiome

• Brain fog dissipates.
• Anxiety and depression reduced.
• Energy levels increase.
• Excess weight is released.

 

What Role Do Parasites Play in Gut Health?

• We're finding that there's certain parasites that help bring down your blood sugar.
• Certain parasites will help you offset certain disease processes.
• The research in new and ongoing in this area.

 

 

Deeper Dive Resources

 

Interconnected Docuseries

https://of535.isrefer.com/go/start/Organixx/podcast-20190424

 

Well.org

https://www.well.org/

 

Viome - At Home Gut Microbiome Testing

https://www.viome.com/

 

Metabolome

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolome

 

Symbiosis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiosis

 

Cleveland Clinic Researchers Find Link Between Bacterial Imbalances and Breast Cancer

https://newsroom.clevelandclinic.org/2017/10/05/cleveland-clinic-researchers-find-link-between-bacterial-imbalances-and-breast-cancer/

 

What prebiotic foods should people eat?

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323214.php

 

11 Probiotic Foods That Are Super Healthy

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/11-super-healthy-probiotic-foods

 

Gut-associated lymphoid tissue

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut-associated_lymphoid_tissue

 

Intestinal permeability

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intestinal_permeability

 

Candidiasis

https://www.health.harvard.edu/a_to_z/candidiasis-a-to-z

 

The Institute for Functional Medicine

https://www.ifm.org/

 

The Hygiene Hypothesis

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.570.9502&rep=rep1&type=pdf

https://www.livescience.com/54078-hygiene-hypothesis.html