Podcast Transcription: Nutrition 101: Part 4: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Gut Health

Ted Ryce: What's up my friend, I’m health expert, Ted Ryce. And this is the fourth and final installment of our, what really matters when it comes to nutrition series.

Super excited to share with you, because gut health is an area where it's underappreciated, it's just going to get more important, especially with dealing with some of these strange symptoms that so many people blame on other things, and we'll get into that and more

But I want to say this before we jump in, if this is your first time listening to the Legendary Life podcast, what this show is all about is clearing up health and fitness confusion by breaking down science-based information on how to lose fat, prevent disease and live a longer healthier life. If that's what you're interested in, then you're in the right place.

And if you've been listening for a while and you appreciate what we do, the Legendary Life team coming every week and putting up two episodes for you, we'd be appreciative of you. If you went to Legendary Light podcast.com/review and left us a review or wherever you leave or listen to podcasts.

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So let's talk about gut health. Now gut health, oh gosh, it's such an area it's just full of, well poop. It's full of misinformation, it's full of people making false claims, and wow, even those people, they make the same claims that I'm making right now, so I feel bad for you, you're really in a mess

But what I'm going to do today, I'm going to do a combination of two things. Now, when I say science, I want to be real clear here. When we're talking about science, we're not talking about using science-y terms, we're talking about randomized controlled trials on human beings. That's what we mean when we're talking about science, and we're also talking about our experience, and in this case, my experience and the experience from the people that I've learned from.

So I will differentiate when I know about this studies and what they say and where something is just my experience.

Now let's talk about gut health: When I first started in health and fitness 20 years ago actually 21 years ago, I was part of an alternative health movement. In fact, a lot of things that are said 20 years later, that we know are wrong, are like stuff that we said 20 years ago.

And I followed this one guy in particular, his name was Paul Chek, C- H- E- K. He's making kind of resurgence, he was on Ben Greenfield’s podcast a couple of times, not too long ago, and what we found was ,Paul promoted all types of things, like electromagnetic radiation interfering with our health, toxins in the environment, was a little bit conspiratorial in terms of his perspective on companies and what they did.

And so, what I want to tell you now is a lot of what's talked about, like oh, vaccines cause autism, or what's another thing? Toxins in the environment, get into your joints and cause arthritis, and just all these things that people say, what we're finding out, at least what I'm finding.

I should say it like this, what I'm finding out is, a lot of symptoms, a lot of strange symptoms that don't seem to be repaired easily, with a typical diet exercise, sleep, stress management. It tends to be gut related in my experience.

And so, what types of symptoms are we talking about? Well, studies have shown strong links between gut dysfunction and symptoms like gas, bloating, stomach pain, diarrhoea, constipation, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, migraines is another one, so all these different issues that we thought were due to something different.

It seems to be that gut health is the frontier, it is the thing that can really help us take our health to the next level, when just that the typical approaches, the typical things that we all know what to do when they're not working, and some of the other health issues that seem to be linked, and I'm not going to say too much on this, in terms of what the study say, because I'm not that well-versed in it, to be honest

But I'll tell you this, auto immune diseases like Psoriasis, Psoriatic Arthritis, Hashimoto's hypothyroidism, Vitiligo, Alopecia, all these other things, they seem to have it, if not their root in gut health, gut health plays a strong part in this.

And it seems to be the frontier we are looking for, even with autism, I’ll share this very quickly. One of the most promising things that I've seen in treating autistic children has been with helping with their gut health.

Now, let's talk about this for a second: In modern life, we live lifestyles that are terrible for our guts, we're overly hygienic. We don't play in the dirt, we use all these anti germ hand soaps and all this other stuff, we're just constantly trying to kill the germs, kill the germs, kill the germs.

And with antibiotics, there's an overuse and misuse really of antibiotics, not just with doctors prescribing them. In fact, I remember being in the hospital one time, and this doctor was complaining to me, because I trained a bunch of doctors, I didn't work with this particular doctor, but he was an emergency doctor who was friends with a doctor client of mine, who is an interventional radiologists, and my client had some cloud and was looked up to, and this guy was just confiding in me, this medical doctor.

He was like, you know, these people, they show up and they're sick and it's a virus, but they want us to prescribe them something, so I give them my antibiotics, even though it's not going to do a damn thing for their viral infection.

Now I'll tell you, I was just like man, you are the doctor, grow a pair and do what you need to do, set them straight, but on the other hand, I could understand, like after the 5,000th time of dealing with that, you're just like screw it. I'm not saying he shouldn’t be doing his job and kicking people out, but I I'm just saying, I understand how dealing with people in Miami in particular, you're just like, all right, here's some pills go and take them.

They should just prescribe some Placebo, or some sugar pills, but I'm sure that's against the law in some way. Anyway, so we have these antibiotics. I've used antibiotics a ton of times, and frankly, it's amazing that we have them, because I would have had to had limbs amputated or died of septic shock when I got these infections, these bacterial infections.

So it's great that we have them, but they're misused overused and it's caused problems, and I'll tell you, they've done some interesting studies where this guy lived with these hunter gatherers in Africa, and his gut microbiome. In other words, the bacteria that live in his intestinal track, they changed very rapidly and it become more diverse when he was living with the Hodgson tribe in Africa.

But as soon as he left, it went back to normal. So, our gut microbiome changes very quickly, and our environment has a huge effect on the diversity of our gut bacteria, which the more diverse, the better.

Another thing that's really important to know: is that it's really interesting, but children brought up on farms tend to have really great immune systems, and that's led scientists to believe that the exposure to animals and all the germs that come with that, leads to a superior immune system, but I don't know about you, I wasn't brought up on a farm. I did spend some time on farms actually, but that wasn't until a bit later in life, I did play in the dirt, but it was in the city.

Yeah, we had a nice backyard, but how many of us are around animals? Maybe we have a dog, maybe we have two, and that's a good thing for your children by the way, in terms of their gut health at least. Also, if a child was born through vaginal birth or through Caesarean section, the vaginal birth, they get more bacteria from their mother and come out stronger versus Caesarean section.

There's just all these things that affect our gut health in the modern world, and things like sterilizing everything, Caesarean section births, so many things. And I know maybe this sounds a bit new age-y, but it's not. It's become legit science now, and people are trying to figure it out. A great resource by the way, is healthy gut healthy you, by Dr. Michael. Ruscio. Definitely get that book and read it. If you hadn't, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

I want to talk about something a little bit different now. One of the diets that is just taking the internet by storm, especially Twitter, is the carnivore diet, and if you see what people who are on the carnivore diet talk about, they say, oh wow, I had all these weird symptoms, and I just started eating meat, and so vegetables are bad for you now, and meat is a super food, because I had all these weird symptoms and now they're gone because I just started eating meat.

All right. Well, first of all, these people are not smart, but they're onto something, they're just not clever enough to figure out what it is.

So what actually is happening, and it's funny, I was going to say, unless you've been under a rock, been living under a rock, you've heard of the carnivore diet, but really it's like, unless you really have a life and you're not spending it all on social media, then you've heard of the carnivore diet because that's the only place where people are really talking about it in big groups.

So, they're onto something though, and today we're going to figure out, or I'm going to share with you what that is.

So let's go back to their claims: I just started eating meat. I cut out everything else and just started eating meat. Meat is a health food, it's healed my body, meat is all glorious and let's praise the meat.

So what I'm going to tell you is this: it has nothing to do with the meat, at all, it has to do with this. Removing foods that are causing problems with their gut health.

Now we talked about all the different ways that modern life kind of works against us, or sterile environments, or Caesarean section, overuse of antibiotics. Weak immune systems because we’re so separated from nature, et cetera, et cetera.

And so, then we start having problems, and these problems are caused by quote unquote healthy foods. In fact, I'm going to tell you right now, it has nothing to do with fruits or vegetables being bad, like those morons say, the carnivore moron say, and if you're a carnivore moron, well, you know what, time to listen and time to step up your knowledge game, because please don't add to the idiocy on the internet, please.

Especially with nutrition, especially with a lot of things actually, but it's rampant, so please step your game up.

So, what we eat can have a major effect on our body, we know that, but what you may not know, what you may not have heard of before is something called FODMAPS: You may not have heard of histamine intolerance and histamine producing foods, you may not have heard of Tyramine, and its connection to migraines. So we're going to talk about that a bit.

So what is a FODMAP: FODMAP stands for fermentable, oligo-,di-,mono-saccharides and polyols, what are those? They're short-change carbohydrates that are resistant to digestion. So instead of being absorbed in your bloodstream, they reached the far side of your intestine, where most of your gut bacteria reside, then your gut bacteria starts eating it and starts producing hydrogen gas, causing digestive symptoms in certain people who are susceptible to this

And FODMAPS also draw liquid into your intestines, which may cause diarrhoea, and although not everyone is sensitive to FODMAPS it's very common in people with irritable bowel syndrome.

And I want to tell you a little story about a client who had some strange complaints, right? Not only was he overweight, which we know is just a calories in calories out equation, it's as simple as that people. But he had complex health issues with his gut, he was having chronic diarrhoea

And the problem with chronic diarrhoea, besides people making fun of you if you tell them about it, so supportive right? Is that, can we all have a moment of silence for my chronic diarrhoea? Sorry.

So, the problem is, it's inflammation: He's feeling terrible, it's hard to be motivated to eat the right things. It's hard to be motivated to exercise when you're feeling bad, and so what we did with him is not just, I typically have this what I call a phase one nutrition plan, I put people on I, in the first two weeks, they lose four to six pounds of fat or two to three kilograms of fat, those are for my metric system friends

But I didn't do that, because I knew it probably wouldn't be the right thing to do. I had him do actually a liquid fast for three days, and then what I did was, I transitioned him slowly into whole foods by having him follow a low FODMAP diet, completely cleared up his irritable bowel syndrome, completely cleared it up.

And he started making the connection that, oh, every time I overeat, especially these certain foods, if I have too many of them, it just wrecks my gut and I start having the diarrhoea again.

So now he knows, this has been a mystery for him for years, especially some of the FODMAP containing foods, are not things that you would consider. So, let me talk to you about this.

For example: Apples, Apple sauce, Apricots, Blackberries, Boysenberries, Cherries, Dates, Figs, Pears, Peaches. Honey, yogurt, sour cream, whey protein, Artichokes, Asparagus, Broccoli, Beet roots, Brussel sprouts, Cabbage, Beans, Chickpeas, Lentils.

I thought Lentils was a health food. Tim Ferriss said eat Lentils every day. Yeah, but listen, these aren't unhealthy foods, its just people who have gut dysfunction can have problems eating these foods. Do you understand the difference?

And so, when a carnivore person says, oh, I got rid of all the Artichokes and Brussel sprouts and Cabbage and Cauliflower, and now I'm healed because vegetables are bad for you, what they're really saying, even though they're too dumb to know it, ignorant really to know it, is that they've eliminated foods that were irritating their already dysfunctional gut, make sense? Cool.

So these foods are healthy, quote, unquote, healthy, but for some people they trigger these problems. And so, if you're having gas, bloating, diarrhoea, constipation, stomach pain, you want to check out a low-fat FODMAP diet, just Google low FODMAP, F-O-D-M-A-P diet, and give it a try.

And of course, if you want me to take you through it, you know where to go for that, but try it. So FODMAPS, now you’ve learnt something, because FODMAPs aren’t talked about a lot.

So let's talk about the next thing, histamine intolerance: So what is histamine intolerance, and what are the foods that cause excess histamine to be produced?

So histamine intolerance, isn't a sensitivity to histamine, it's an indication that you have too much histamine in your body for you: So histamine is critical for a few major functions in your body, communicates messages to your brain. You take any histamines to help with an allergic reaction. It can also trigger the release of stomach acids to help digestion, but when histamine levels get too high or, and or you can't break it down properly, it can affect normally bodily functions. What are we talking about here?

Headaches, or migraines, sinus issues, nasal congestion, fatigue, hives, digestive issues, like what we mentioned before. Even irregular menstrual cycle, nausea, vomiting, and in some severe cases, we're talking about cramping, abdominal cramping, dizziness, high blood pressure, other issues.

So what causes high histamine levels? Well, your body produces an enzyme that breaks down the histamine that you take in from foods, it's called diamine oxidase, and if you develop a diamine oxidase deficiency, and you don't break down histamine very well, you can develop very high levels, and this can cause the problems that we talked about.

So what are histamine rich foods? Alcohol and other fermented beverages, fermented foods and dairy products, yogurt, sauerkraut, kimchi, dried fruits, avocados, eggplant, spinach, shellfish, aged cheese. So this can be an issue, right? This can be an issue

And also there's foods that block diamine oxidase production: Black tea, Montay tea, Green tea, alcohol.

So, if you're struggling with this, with some of the things we talked about earlier: the nasal congestion, headaches, migraines, fatigue, and you're having digestive issues, you might want to check out the low histamine diet and low histamine foods. I mean, there's a lot of them, so just Google it, but you're having weird symptoms and your doctor's not helping you, and you're trying different things and you're eating pretty healthy.

And you're exercising and getting your sleep, but you're still having these issues, and we're not talking about fat loss by the way, go refer to lesson one for fat loss. Fat loss diets will cut back on your calories and maybe some of these foods. So it might help, but if you really want to target gut health in particular, it has nothing to do with calories. It has to do with these specific foods like FODMAPs and high histamine foods.

Another issue is this: High Tyramine foods. So, if you experience migraine headaches, you might have heard of a Tyramine free diet.

So, Tyramine is a compound produced by the breakdown of an amino acid called tyrosine. And it's naturally present in some foods, plants, and animals.

So, what does Tyramine do? It does a lot of things, but it has an influence on, what are called the catecholamines. So fight or flight chemicals that act as both hormones and neurotransmitters, dopamine, norepinephrine. Epinephrine and adrenaline are both the same thing by the way, we call it epinephrin in the United States, because if I remember correctly, adrenaline is trademarked so you can't use it.

So, anyway, what happens when you have this issue? Well, I'm going to tell you a story about Gisele, my wife, she was doing well with her headaches. Actually, she was struggling with gastritis, and we put her on a low FODMAP diet and it was very interesting, she would get triggered by eating certain fruits, and she would notice, oh, my stomach's burning.

After we did the low FODMAP diet and some other things, her gut health improved, and she was able to go back to eating them again, but then another problem happened. So she gets massive migraines, but we had them under control until she went to Istanbul to visit some of her family. She's got some family living out there.

And she was visiting her family and the culture in Istanbul, Turkey, you know, Istanbul, Turkey. If you're not familiar with the famous, delicious Turkish breakfast, they give you honey, they give you lots of different cheeses, so it's got a lot of cheese in it.

So she started having massive migraines, and she asked me, she's like, hey, is there a connection between dairy and migraines? Because I just started having bad, bad migraines, and I said, yeah of course, high Tyramine. Certain foods, certain fermented foods, cured foods, aged foods, spoiled foods, all have high Tyramine.

What are we talking about? We're talking about aged cheddar cheeses, blue cheeses, Gorgonzola, cured or smoked meats, or fish, sausage, salami, beers on tap or home brewed. Some fruits that are a bit too ripe, certain beans like fava beans and broad beans. Sauces like soy sauce, teriyaki. Pickled products like sauerkraut sourdough breads, fermented, soy products like miso tempeh rice, stinky Tofu, which I have not had, but it's very popular Taiwan, I believe.

So these are foods that have high amounts of Tyramine in it, and Tyramine, I don't know how strong the research here, but this is something that is well-documented. So what we did was we lowered her Tyramine containing foods, and the migraines went away. Again, my wife doesn't have a fat loss problem, right? She's healthy body, fat percentage. She exercises regularly. In fact, she was missing exercise because the headaches, because the migraines. And there's nothing wrong with cheeses, having some of it is okay, but for some people who are triggered by these foods, you want to avoid them.

So if you have migraines, you want to look into this, this Tyramine free diet. So just to recap a little bit, we're not talking about, see how this goes beyond like, oh, healthy food, good food, bad food. So for some people, Brussels Sprouts and Cauliflower and Cabbage, that's healthy for them, but people who have sensitive, dysfunctional guts, the FODMAPs in those vegetables can cause problems.

Again, there's nothing wrong with some of the foods that are high in histamine, but for some people who have trouble breaking it down, or who have issues with this diamine oxidase enzyme that breaks down the histamine in foods, they can have a problem with their gut health, and same thing, I don't have headaches, I don't suffer from headaches unless I'm hung over.

So I don't ever worry about foods that are high or low in Tyramine, but. It's important that we're aware of this because this is what's responsible for so many of these weird health issues that we have.

And I want to share something personal, a personal story about gut health, and then I'm going to talk a little bit about supplements and then we'll wrap things up here. I've had big time issues with my gut for a long time, undigested food in my faeces when I went to use the bathroom, loose stools, not so much with constipation, although I've had issues with it, but I tried so many things and I couldn't figure it out, I'm like, I'm eating healthy food here, why am I having these problems?

Let me tell you, I felt the inflammation everywhere in my body. I have joints that start acting up big time when my gut is a mess. And so, when I learned about this, this was game changing, and the first thing I did was put myself on a liquid diet for three days.

And I want to be clear here, I didn't do it to lose body fat, even though I did lose a little bit, and you will because calories, but what it really does is it gets rid of the foods that are causing the inflammation in your gastrointestinal tract, the irritation, the inflammation, and so when you do that, you just start feeling better.

So why am I telling you this? Because you can lose fat, and still have these issues. You can be eating healthy foods, making sure you're getting all your, optimizing your nutrients and still have these issues and still not feel healthy. You can get your emotions handled and still have problems with this, it's a big deal.

So the first thing I would tell you is to try an elimination diet, or even just a liquid diet: And I used the master cleanse, just Google it, it's just the lemonade diet, I just drink lemonade for three days, and it was amazing the reduction in joint pain that I got, the reduction in some of the other issues that I experienced, health issues.

In fact, I'm really overdue, I need to do it again. My gut got massively messed up in Cambodia, and still hasn't fully recovered from it. Be careful if you go to Cambodia, the food is just, there's something wrong with the food there. So, the bacteria, it’s not handled properly and it's messed me up and I still haven't recovered.

So what I need to do is, I need to first, doing a little break and doing a liquid diet can really help solve things. It can help, if you're having a lot of joint pain and you're like, why am I so achy everywhere? Why am I having these weird symptoms? Why am I, you know, every other bowel movement is diarrhoea or super loose, or I see undigested food in my stool, try the lemonade diet for three days. I just call it the lemonade diet people, don't get it misunderstood. It's just a way of, it's an elimination diet.

You could try the carnivore diet too, if that's something you want to try. Personally, I don't like lowering carbs that much, so I choose to do the eliminate diet, and I use honey instead of maple syrup, and I just do it for two or three days just to reset myself.

And then afterward, what you want to do is be careful as you add back in foods, but just a three-day break can really cause some of your health problems to go away, and that's what I had my client do. The one that I taught, the first person that I talked to you about, I did not have Gisele do it by the way, because she gets very ill if she goes too long without eating, very ill. And we're not talking about hangry, she’s hangry is that what you mean? No, she starts throwing up bile and can't stop throwing up and it turns into it's a real mess, it really messes her up.

So after you do that and you start reintroducing foods, being very careful to figure out if you have any sensitivities to the FODMAP containing foods, the histamine containing foods, or if you suffer from migraines and headaches and all those types of things, the Tyramine foods. After you do that, and you're careful about it, I highly recommend starting a probiotic.

VSL 3 is a good one, there's several good ones out there. Viome I believe is another good one, and in addition to the probiotics, I recommend hydrochloric acid with betaine. I'm sorry, with pepsin, can sometimes contain betaine though, to help you break down protein, if you notice that you have a problem with eating meat.

And if you're having a problem with eating carbs and fats, eating a digestive enzyme, and I'll tell you, I take both. So I take hydrochloric acid, and I know that probably sounds like a really hardcore supplement but it's not, really inexpensive as well. And I take a broad spectrum digestive enzyme, and I take those all the time, and it helps me digest my food better.

So those are my top three gut health supplements and my top gut health approach to lower inflammation, that's coming from your gut or to get rid of some weird symptoms that nobody's ever been able to really quite figure out.

A good dietician would be able to help you, although there's not very many of those out there. Doctors, only if they do functional medicine and functional medicine is such a crack pot of people, you have to be kind of careful, but Dr. Michael Ruscio is someone I could recommend in that regard.

And also I've helped out a lot of people with this as well, something that I like doing, because this gut health, it's a new frontier of like, okay, when you have these strange symptoms that aren't going away, when you just lose fat, clean up your diet, getting it in enough exercise, getting enough sunshine, doing things to de-stress yourself, what else do you do? Well, here's where you look.

So I'm going to wrap things up now. I hope you learned a lot from today. I hope it at least opened your eyes to what's going on with nutrition and why some people say they get great results doing this thing or that thing, and what it's really about, now you know, now you're in the know.

And again, I want to recommend Dr. Michael’s book, healthy gut, healthy you. It's a fantastic book, probably the single best resource that I know on gut health.

And the last thing I want to say is, if you're having a problem with your gut health, with, these weird issues. If you're having an issue with arthritis and it just doesn't seem to be related to, it's not your old football injury or that running injury. The knee, the running injury it’s not the shoulder football injury or whatever, if it's just like kind of more systemic kind of all over your body, and you're not sure why it's like that. Well, dealing with your gut health is the way to go.

And if you need help with that, if you want to work with me and trust in me to help you with that, which I've helped many, many, many people, including myself with it, then what you do is go to Legendary Life program.com/ apply.

That's Legendary Life program.com/apply, and we'll hop on a call and after you apply to the coaching program and we'll talk about it, but I will tell you this, it is a body transformation program, so I don't strictly deal with gut health people, and if you're not going to exercise.

So this is a getting shaped better while improving your gut program. If you're just looking for someone to help with, specifically with gut health, I'm not your guy. I do a whole program, and that's kind of what excites me and that's what I like doing.

So if that's something you want help with, you want my help with it, again, Legendary Life program.com/apply is how you get that. Now, take this information, go act on it and go forth and have a healthier gut. Having an amazing week. Hope you enjoyed this and I'll speak to you on Friday.