microbiome

Transcript for Detox Your Body

Dr. Cates: Hi there. Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. I’m Dr. Trevor Cates. Today I want to talk with you about cleansing and detoxification. This time of year is the perfect time of year to be doing a cleanse or a detoxification program because we’ve just finished up the holiday season where there is stress and eating things that you probably wouldn’t normally eat or maybe excess sugar, excess sugar and caffeine, alcohol, those types of things. We’ve been overdoing it with most likely and also we’ve been really stressed and holidays bring in a lot of times of stress, so it’s the perfect time of year to be doing a cleansing detoxification. It’s also one of the biggest questions I get asked about because there’s so many myths out there about detoxification and cleansing and so many different programs and information online. It can be a bit overwhelming. So I wanted to do today’s podcast all about detoxification and cleansing the safe way to do it, tips for doing it successfully and what you should look for as far as results, how you know you’re going on the wrong track.

Dr. Cates: All of that information I want to share with you today. So let’s go ahead and dive in. And first of all, people ask me, how do I know if I need to do a cleanse program or a detoxification or what does that even mean in the first place? Okay, so typically what we’re talking about is when your system feels burden, when you, especially when you’ve gone through, like I said, the holidays with eating too much sugar, maybe too many processed foods, eating out a lot, getting a little too much alcohol, caffeine, those types of things really put a burden on the body and the on the liver, the kidneys, the lymphatic system, all of our pathways of detoxification, including our digestive system, gets burdened by all of the things that we might tend to do in excess that we know aren’t really healthy for us, but we tend to do.

Dr. Cates: That can oftentimes, as you know, I’m author of the book, Clean Skin From Within, I talk a lot about skin and when we need a cleanse, oftentimes it shows up on our skin. Our skin can look dull, dry, we can be breaking out more in acne. We might just feel like our skin just is aging all of a sudden very quickly. There might be rashes, all of flare ups of things like eczema and rosacea can also be signs that the body is being burdened and our pathways of detoxification and elimination are not working very well. So it’s nice to push a reset button and do a cleanse program to help support our pathways of detoxification, like our liver and kidneys and our skin is actually an organ of detoxification and elimination. And then of course our digestive system. All of that needs extra support at times. And this can show up not just on your skin.

Dr. Cates: Of course that’s a lot of my focus and one of the easiest, most simplest signs that our body gives us is on our skin. But also we might just start feeling more achy, more aches and pains and stiffness. A lot of people will say to me, I feel like I’m just getting old, but maybe it’s not that you’re getting older. Maybe your body just needs a break from a lot of things you’ve been doing and you might have a lot of internal inflammation. Your body’s not able to function as optimally as it has been when it’s at a healthy state. So in addition to feeling achy, maybe more pain and stiffness, you also might start to feel some brain fog, moodiness, fatigue, changes with your hormones, your hormones could, if you’re a woman in particular, you might notice changes with your cycles.

Dr. Cates: You could also notice headaches, irritability, digestive issues. These can all be signs that your body has reached a point where it needs additional support and that could be a good time for a cleanse or detoxification program. Now I want to clear this myth up. So I think that a lot of people think that you do a detox program and then you just go back to living the same way of drinking a lot of alcohol, eating fast foods and eating and living an unhealthy lifestyle. There is no detoxification program that’s going to replace healthy daily habits. Those are the things you want to focus on. You really want to use a cleanse program to get you on track or get you back on track. And so that you’re, it because it’s those daily lifestyle choices that we make. Those are the ones that help us feel our best, look our best, live longer in a healthy way.

Dr. Cates: Those or the daily lifestyle choices that you make. That’s what’s going to change genetic expression to help us live healthy, longer lives and being free of disease and symptoms including skin problems. So I, I don’t want to, to make anyone believe that there’s a, with some detox program that’s going to fix you do one time and that you can go back to eating an unhealthy lifestyle, an healthy diet, living an unhealthy life. Of course. Just want to make sure that’s clear. And again, I think of a detox program is like pushing the reset button. It is a chance to get things back on track, give your body a boost, give your body some new, accelerate the healing process so that you can get back on track. And often times if you do a cleanse program correctly, you’re not going to have the sugar cravings, you’re not going to have those desires to eat those trigger foods and some of the things that we’ll be talking about, those cravings, those tendencies are just not going to be there.

Dr. Cates: So I created a two week program, a two week cleanse program and people can find out more about that in my Facebook, I have a private Facebook Group Clean Skin From Within and you can go there and you can join the group. It’s completely free. I lead people through this two week program and we’ve already started it this year in January of 2020 but it is a great way to be involved and truly understand and I lay it all out in my book, Clean Skin From Within. You can get a free copy at book.thespadr.com just pay the shipping and handling fee to get it to you. So I’m going to talk about a little bit about that two week program, but to get the full program, all you have to do is get my book and follow the program.

Dr. Cates: I’ve been doing this for, I’ve been seeing patients for almost 20 years now and I have been doing a version of this program with my patients for 20 years and narrowed it down to two weeks as a perfect amount of time. Again to press that reset button to get you back on track. But let’s go ahead and talk about some of the things that are really key and essential for detoxification. Really, I think of them as three different steps and you can learn a lot more again, in my book, especially in the clean body section on my book, I talk a lot about detoxification, but let’s talk about this. So the first thing is you want to reduce the level of toxic exposure that you have. There is no point in doing a cleanse program and taking supplements or doing, changing your diet if you, if you’re continuing to be exposed to more toxins in your environment because your body reaches a certain level and it’s hard for it to continue to processing everything that’s being exposed to.

Dr. Cates: So as if you’re planning on doing a cleanse program, the first thing you want to do, is look at all the ways you can reduce your exposure to toxins in your environment. And that means your air, water, food, personal care products, and your home. Those are the places to start. That’s where do you want to focus on, because that’s where you have the most control. And that’s where you live most of your life, right? Like you’re sleeping every night in your home, your the foods that you’re eating, the water that you’re drinking, the air that you’re breathing in your home, that’s where you want to focus. So let’s talk about why in particular. So when you’re exposed to one of the biggest group of chemicals, class of chemicals that are of concern for our health, are endocrine disrupting chemicals. So this group of chemicals, what happens is they can really disrupt our hormone function.

Dr. Cates: And again, this is another reason why we want to do a cleanse is to help with balancing hormones and getting our hormones back on track. So when we’re exposed to this group of chemicals, it’s further complicating and making issues with hormone balance. So you want to reduce these chemicals. Now they’re in so many different places. Pesticides in food, toxins in air pollutants, toxic ingredients in skincare products, in cleaning products. Many of these are places where we’re exposed to endocrine disrupting chemicals. So there’s been a lot of research done on this class of chemicals and what what’s been found is what happens is they will bind to hormone receptors and actually mimic hormones or, or turn off the functioning, interfere with the functioning of the hormone receptors so our hormones can’t function the way they should optimally. So what this means is that this is one of the reasons we are seeing more rates of infertility.

Dr. Cates: Certain types of cancers like breast cancer, prostate cancer, thyroid disease is definitely on the rise. We’re seeing these and many other health issues related to hormones on the rise because we’re exposed to more of these endocrine disrupting chemicals now than we ever have been. There are these chemicals that have these endocrine disrupting chemicals have been in our environment for many years and they don’t just go away. Things like lead from gasoline or from paint. It doesn’t just disappear because we banned it. It continues to exist in our soil and, and even if we ban chemicals and the U.S., they still exist in other, they might still exist in other countries like in China and they could travel over in clouds and with the environment travel over in clouds, then it rains down and puts these chemicals into our water, our soil. And so we want to do everything and I don’t want to be doom and gloom here what I wanted to do is bring your awareness to this because what you want to do is just reduce your toxic exposures, especially of these endocrine is mud disrupting chemicals as much as possible so that you’re getting less of these because it’s not just when you think about endocrine disrupting chemicals and hormone dysregulation, it’s not just sex hormones, it’s also thyroid hormones that that impact our metabolism, our energy, our adrenal hormones.

Dr. Cates: Again, that give us energy that help us with healthy aging, our melatonin, which helps us sleep at night, growth hormone, again, anti-aging benefits there and the list goes on and on. You know, there’s also insulin which helps keeps our blood sugar regulated and which helps with weight. So many different hormones. And then of course there are the sex hormones to estrogen, progesterone, testosterone. And then there’s DGA and there’s so many different hormones that cause our bodies to function optimally. And so we want to reduce these chemicals, this endocrine disrupting chemicals. Okay. Enough about that. You can read more about that in my book, if you want to delve in more, also you can find a lot about endocrine disrupting chemicals there’s tons of research on this.

Dr. Cates: But let’s talk about how you can reduce your exposure to these air, water, food, personal care products, and your home. So in your air, in your homes, you can get an air purifier and these units, one of my favorites is Austin Air and I can provide a link for that for anyone that’s interested in Austin Air. I do think it’s one of the best air filters out there because of the combination of HEPA and ionic filtration. And it is, it’s been used for many years. I’ve been using it in my practice recommending it for my patients for 20 years. And it’s one of my favorites for the, you know, the longevity of the unit and all of that. So I do think it’s a fantastic, air purifier. It’s what I have, one of the ones I have in my own home in my kids’ bedrooms and my room and our living room. So you can get an air filtration system to have in your home.

Dr. Cates: The most important place. If you could only have one air purifier, the most important place to put it is in your bedroom because that’s where you spend the most time. And unfortunately, you can’t just put one air filter in a home and expect it to filter the whole home unless you have a one room home. But, but typically you’ll want different size units for different, for different rooms. So look at getting an air purifier. Now, if you live in a City, this is going to be particularly important because of the air pollution that you have, where you live. Also, if you live in a place like I do in Park City, Utah, in the winter time, our homes are so sealed and energy efficient, which is great, but we’re not getting any fresh air in the home. So anything of all the furniture and any paint, any carpeting, all of that is going to be offgassing into the air.

Dr. Cates: So indoor air quality is actually worse than even, air in a City. So if you, have your home is pretty closed up, you’re not able to open up the windows, definitely that’s another situation where you want to get an air purifier and you want to change the filters as indicated with whatever unit you end up getting. You could also, if you have a central air system in your home, you can also get filters and change those regularly, especially when you’re running the air either in the summer or the winter and you’re running it regularly. You can get good air filters for that. That’s not quite the same as getting an air purifier, it’s not going to clean air, quite the same and the particle size. But it is a something that you can do. So just make sure I, I recommend changing those once a month if you’re running your air system on a regular basis.

Dr. Cates: And then also getting your air ducts cleaned periodically to make sure that, that the airflow through the filter is working well and you’re not getting mold and debris and different things built up in the air system. So that’s air. Okay. And that is part of your home. You can also look at your work environment and that’s another place that you might have control over, but not always. I work from home so I, get to purify my air and my home and office all at the same time. So the other thing is water. So having a water purification system is key and it is really hard to find clean water. It doesn’t really matter where in the world you live, it’s really hard to find clean water. So whether you are on City water or you have a, well one thing, if you’re really not sure the best system to get, you could have your water tested to see what’s in it.

Dr. Cates: Or if you’re on a City water, then you can look at their tests to see what’s typically found in the water, where you live. Where I live in Park City, it’s this beautiful pristine mountain town, you think that the water would be perfectly clean, that you could drink it from the tap, but it’s also a mining town, not anymore, but it used to be and because it used to be a mining town, there is lead and arsenic and other heavy metals in the water. I have tested this, I’ve seen it show up. The levels show up high in my patients here, so I always tell people in Park City and you know of course wherever you are your water is going to be different that it’s important to get a water filter. The best water filter system that I find is a reverse osmosis water filtration system and if you’re concerned about it taking out the minerals in addition to all of the toxic chemicals that might be in the water, then you can do have an add back system.

Dr. Cates: We also at The Spa Dr. have electrolyte drops that you can add to your water after it’s purified. But the biggest thing is again, we want to reduce your have the heavy metals that might be and water PCBs, pesticides, these are fluoride, chlorine. These are commonly found in water, but they are not good for our body. These do have many of these have endocrine disrupting effects or they have been linked to other health issues. Really depending upon what you might find in your water. So water, get a purification system. If you can’t get a reverse osmosis system or maybe you’re renting your home, you can get something more temporary, you can add to the faucet or you can get pitchers that filter the water. Don’t, those don’t necessarily filter out as much as reverse osmosis systems, but they still are better than just drinking straight tap water.

Dr. Cates: In addition to drinking water, you’re also going to be in your shower and your bath. You’re going to be getting, you’re going to be also beginning these toxic ingredients that might be in your water, the toxic chemicals that might be in her water through the air as it aerosolizes chlorine will go into the air and you can, you breathe it in. And especially when it’s hot and steamy, it can have detrimental effects to the body. So you want to also, have a filter for your shower and perhaps your bathtub if you take a lot of baths. So another thing to think about. In my home, I have a whole house filtration system in addition to our reverse osmosis system. Now I don’t, you know, it might be a bit more, especially if you’re renting your home, it may not be what you want to invest in, where you’re living right now.

Dr. Cates: But if you know you’re going to be in your home for many years, I’ve been in my home for 10 years and plan to be here longer, then you will want to, it’s a great idea to invest in this because if you think about the people that buy water and they have jar jugs of water and they go through that, if you look at the long term, you’re actually probably going to save money in the longterm if you get a, a reverse osmosis system or something and take your water with you. So that’s another key is when you leave your home, you take your filtered water with you. And we have at The Spa Dr., we have our stainless steel water bottles are insulated, are beautiful, but something like that so that you can take your filter water wherever you go. And preferably storing in stainless steel, glass and avoiding plastics as much as possible.

Dr. Cates: Plastics. And this is, this is kind of segwaying into other aspects of ways to reduce toxin exposure is what you store your food in. And so not only are plastics bad for the environment and you may have seen some, there are documentaries out there talking about the harmful effects that all the plastics, the plastic bags, the plastic straws and the water bottles and all of that are having on our environment. So the more you can do to reduce your use of plastics, especially the single use is going to be better for our environment as well as our health. Even if it’s a BPA free plastic, it could have other components in there that could also have endocrine disrupting effects. BPA is one of those chemicals that has endocrine disrupting effects and it’s been eliminated from a lot of plastics. But unfortunately there are other aspects of plastics that could also still have endocrine-disrupting effects.

Dr. Cates: So store your food, your water, your drinks in, stainless steel, and cooking stainless steel, um, glass, ceramic, those are all much better choices. When we go to food, choosing organic as much as possible, that’s going to help reduce your exposure to pesticides. So that’s food and making sure that you’re getting clean sources if you can grow your own, that’s fantastic. And in addition to food, the next thing that I would say is really important to look at our personal care products. These are the things that you put on your body every day. If you think about all of the different products that you’re using, the shampoo, the conditioner, the skin care products, the deodorant, the shaving products, all of that really adds up. And so what we want to do is reduce our exposure here. Again, looking at labels and being aware of what you’re putting in your skin care products.

Dr. Cates: And you’ve heard me talk about my skin care products and what led me to create The Spa Dr. line you know what I was finding is that there were, it was actually hard to find truly clean skin care products that got my patient’s results. And so that’s why I created The Spa Dr. skin care line is to find something that was truly clean. Whereas what I was finding with a lot of so-called natural products is that many of them would say that they were clean. When I started to look carefully at the labels, there would still be fragrance, there’d be parabens, there’d be things like phenoxyethanol and dimethicone and things that actually not only are harmful for your body, but they’re harmful for your skin and the skin microbiome. So that’s why I created The Spa Dr. skin care line is to have products that are truly clean and still help give people results.

Dr. Cates: So what you want to start doing is looking at your personal care product labels. And if sometimes you can’t even find the ingredients are so hard to read. So you can go on websites, environmental working group, ewg.org is a nice resource for going to their skin deep database where you can actually do a search for a product that you might be using and it gives you a rating of how safe and how clean it is. The Spa Dr. skin care products are EWG verified. We’ve met their stringent, a really strict criteria for being clean, healthy skin care products. But you might be using other products as well and you’re curious about those. So you can go and check that out. That’s a great resource also in my book, Clean Skin From Within, I have the top ingredients to avoid and then other healthier alternatives.

Dr. Cates: Like for example, you can use organic essential oils instead of synthetic fragrance, much healthier alternative. And that’s what we use in The Spa Dr. line. So again start looking at your labels just like you might do with your food labels and, and asking questions about those personal care products. And don’t forget, it’s not just the products that you put on your face, the rest of your body, your hair, think about whatever you breathe in, whatever touches your skin, if you wouldn’t put it in your mouth, stop and think, is this really good for my body? Because if we’re doing a detoxification program and you’re continuing to add these things in, your body is going to be working hard on eliminating those rather than what’s stored up in your body. So that’s what we want to think about with a detoxification program is, is to really clear out your body and, and you’ve got to reduce these exposures in order to, to appropriately effectively do this.

Dr. Cates: Okay. And so then the last aspect is really just looking at your home in general and all the different ways that you might be exposed to toxins in your home. So thinking about what are some simple things that you can do with your cleaning products, and that includes all the things that you’re using to clean things as well as your laundry and your soaps and those, all of those are contributing. Are you using pesticides in and around your home? All of that is going to be, they’re going to add to that total burden of toxins. It’s like our body becomes this soup of toxic ingredients that we’re exposed to from our environment and they interact with each other. And we already see a lot of the research coming out on the harmful effects on these, but we don’t even know how all of these things interact within our bodies.

Dr. Cates: So even doing something as simple as when you come home, when you come in your door, removing your shoes instead of walking through your home with your shoes on. Because if you think about where you been, you may have been walking at the gas station and picked up gasoline on your shoes. You may have walked through a park that sprays pesticides and you’re bringing that into home. And especially if you have pets or small children or you spend time on the ground doing yoga or stretching, you don’t want these things, especially in your carpet, your flooring, they get tracked throughout the entire home. They also attached to these, these chemicals will attach to dust particles in your home and they’ll linger in the corners and then they get stirred up and you breathe them in in addition. So okay, I think you’ve got the idea here on the step one, which is reducing toxins in your air, water, food, home, personal care products. Look at all the different ways that you can do that and really, when it comes to detoxification, that is one of the most important steps.

Dr. Cates: This next step is decreasing inflammation and supporting your body, especially with elimination. So before we really go into detoxification and amping up that that’s at, which is actually step three, the final step is to actually support your body so that when you do the detoxification program, it’s in the right place to do it. If you do a big detox program, especially a liver detoxification, a colon cleansing, if you start to dive into this without creating a good foundation for your body, you may actually feel worse. It may be a strain on your body. So I like to let people know that, you know, get your body ready for this. Go into it gently. Don’t try and go into an extreme detoxification program and tell your body is really better.

Dr. Cates: And it’s tell us in a good state. And one of that is decreasing inflammation and making sure that your elimination is working properly. Because if you start taking supplements and the exit door is closed, like you’re constipated, you can’t get things out, your liver is not working well, your kidneys aren’t working well, your skin is dry, you’re not exfoliating properly. If all of that’s not done first, it’s just going to get stirred up inside your body and it can’t get out. So step two is about decreasing inflammation and helping support elimination. So to help decrease inflammation, you want to avoid big triggers. In addition to the chemicals they talked about avoiding, you want to avoid big trigger foods. Things like sugar and dairy for a lot of people those are. In my book Clean Skin From Within and in my two week program that I lead everybody through on my Facebook group, I talk about 10 different things to avoid for two weeks and it’s really important to identify these, what your trigger foods are and doing this program is a great way to identify what your trigger foods are because they’re typically the same for a lot of people and you want to switch to more anti-inflammatory foods and again, in my book Clean Skin From Within and then the Facebook group, I talk about all of that. I talk about my whole two week program. The focus is on anti-inflammatory foods, nourishing foods, cleansing foods that help support your body. So you know it’s a great thing to switch over to that to help support your body. And that’s not just when you’re doing a cleanse program, but really on an ongoing basis. But before you go into some big detox program, you want to make sure that you’re doing that and you’re supporting your body. You also, like I said, you want it to support your exit routes, your elimination part of that’s your digestive system. You don’t want to be constipated going into a liver cleanser, a detoxification program. So what you might want to consider, things that you can do to help support address constipation. Let’s start with digestion. Drinking more water.

Dr. Cates: You want to be drinking, making sure you’re drinking at least eight glasses of water a day, filter water, of course. Increasing your fiber intake. Most people do not get enough fiber. We really need 25 to 30 grams of fiber a day and most people only get 10 grams or less. So one of the ways you could do that is eat more vegetables, six or more servings of vegetables. You could also, you can get them some and legumes, beans and peas. You also might want to consider a supplement like chia seeds, some of those kinds of seeds and things that can help add in some additional fiber. And if that still doesn’t work, you might want to consider an herbal laxative or work with a healthcare provider who can help figure out why exactly you have the constipation. You might have some hypothyroidism or other health issue that’s causing you to be constipated.

Dr. Cates: Certainly you don’t want to do a big detoxification program until you’ve addressed that. You also want to support your kidneys by drinking filter water. You want to make sure that they’re working properly and improving your skin’s ability to perspire. Perspiring. Sweat is an important part of detoxification. We have a lot of our, the toxins in our body are stored up in our fat cells and when we sweat lipolysis happens where the fat cells break down and where those toxins are stored, those can be released and it is a fantastic way to help with detoxification. However, if you’re not able to perspire well because your skin is really dry, you have clogged pores, any of that going on then then that could be a problem. So you want to make sure that you’re exfoliating your skin properly, both your face and your body.

Dr. Cates: We have our, at The Spa Dr. we have our Pearl and Rose Petal Facial Exfoliant. It’s just the perfect combination of ingredients for gentle but effective exfoliation for the face. And that’s where I want you to be really careful and you don’t want anything abrasive on the face because that can be very damaging to the delicate skin on our face. On your body you can do some of the DIY, a little bit more, a little bit more abrasive exfoliation on the body is okay, especially in the areas where you know, the skin is thicker, you can do that. In my book I have some DIY skincare recipes for exfoliation as well. So you want to do that, you might want to consider dry skin brushing. That’s another great tool I talk about in my book and recommend doing during my two week program because not only does that help your skin and also helps with your lymphatic flow, the lymph flow in your body, which helps transport the chemicals that might be stored up in your body and helps your body eliminate them.

Dr. Cates: Okay. So let’s talk about step three, because this is probably what you’re really excited about to learn more about is, is actual detoxification. How do I help ramp up amp up my body’s elimination detoxification pathways? And this is true, this is, this is a great time of year to do something like this. What you want to do is to be, first of all, let’s talk about food. There are foods that are particularly cleansing foods, so you want to focus on eating a lot of these foods. So things like the from the cruciferous vegetable, family, turnips, cabbage, kale, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, collards, mustard greens, radishes, rutabaga, all of those are really great as well as onions, garlic, and even fermented vegetables, those are also great. So there are components and cruciferous vegetables like Indole-3-Carbinol, Sulforaphane and DIM that actually help with detoxification, they help with liver detoxification.

Dr. Cates: And also they help enhance, they have antioxidant properties that the body needs to help fight against oxidative damage, which is one of the reasons why we do detoxification and cleansing programs is to fight that oxidative free radical damage that speeds up the aging process. And also it makes us more susceptible to certain diseases like cancer. So we want to do, you know, get lots of antioxidants in our diet as well as these components that help with liver detoxification. In fact, Indole-3-Carbinol helps increase the livers ability to metabolize estrogen by almost 50% so one of these great aspects of hormone balancing foods in this all ties back to detoxification. So great foods to eat, the cruciferous vegetable, family, garlic and onions, they have those sulfur compounds like allicin that helps support detoxification pathways.

Dr. Cates: You can also drink some herbal teas and some of my favorites for our detoxification are dandelion chicory and milk thistle. These help both support kidney and liver function. So you get kind of both with that, drink plenty of these herbal teas. And you can also bump up detox support with supplements. Now you want to be careful and if you have any existing health issues, you want to work with a healthcare provider who is experienced in this and that’s a licensed practitioner that understands the body and detoxification, understands your unique health situation, but they’re the ones that are typically safe for people to take. And that includes supplements like milk thistle, which helps with liver detoxification as well as N-acetyl cysteine or NAC, which is an amino acid and vitamin C, something as simple as vitamin C all three of these help with increasing glutathione production glutathione is produced by the liver and helps is, is key and helping with detoxification to help eliminate the toxins that are stored up in the body.

Dr. Cates: Also, turmeric and I really in a supplement form this one, you’re going to get more of the benefits, but turmeric is a rich in anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties and also helps with liver detoxification. So it’s a really potent, herb plant, but when it’s put into a supplement and a potent form, similar to let what we have in our Skinflam-Ease is a supplement at The Spa Dr. It can have really beneficial effects and we just, we know these effects of turmeric aren’t always, we’re not going to just get it necessarily from food and that’s when supplements can play an important role and and helping really amp it up, take it to the next level because when we just take turmeric and getting turmeric in your diet is great, but if we’re really looking at ways to detox and getting those anti-inflammatory and antioxidant benefits usually want to take it in a supplement form and a potent form that is absorbable by the body.

Dr. Cates: Okay. So those are some ideas on supplements. Certainly there are a lot of other options for a detoxification. We also have, actually I have it right behind me are all in one a 14 day cleanse kit so that at The Spa Dr. we have it all set up packets of supplements and easy to take in 14 days so there are programs like that that you can incorporate into doing a program. Now I like to do it as a two week program. That’s what I found that works best for my patients. And it’s really the a way to get started. And then you want to have your daily detoxification practices that you have because really it’s not just the two weeks that you want to detox its that ongoing, those daily lifestyle choices. So eating cruciferous vegetables, not just during those two weeks, but eating them on a regular basis, find a way to love them.

Dr. Cates: That’s why I put lots of recipes in my book is because I know people say oh I can’t stand broccoli. I don’t like, I’ve never made these types of vegetables before, but get creative. Use herbs and spices and really great oils like, you know, like coconut well and, ands avocado oil and things like that to help make sure that you’re, you’re getting, um, getting the most out of those and you cooking them and enjoying them. Put them in soups and stews and, and get them in your diet in the way that you can. So in addition to the supplements, there are a few other things that I would recommend to incorporate into your detox program. And so another one is looking at ways that you sweat more Again, it’s one of these detoxification pathways. So how can we, how can we sweat more? Of course, exercise, moving, arobotic activity that can definitely be a way to help you sweat more.

Dr. Cates: Remember I talked about lipolysis is breaking down at fat cells and then it gets released through sweat is an important part of that. I really think it’s great to use all of the detoxification pathways, liver, kidneys, lymphatic system, skin, sweat, use all of it to your advantage and including your digestive system. Bring it all together and that’s when you’re going to get the best results. And so exercise is a great way to get more perspiration. And another way to do that is through saunas. Now there are a lot of different types of saunas out there. Some are better than others, but there are actually ones that you can get. I have one right outside the back of my house and it’s a little unit, you could squeeze two people in there, but it’s really more for one person and it’s an infrared sauna.

Dr. Cates: It’s a beautiful sauna. It is not really as expensive as you would think. So they’re great if you could have them at your own, in your own, you know, space. But you could also go to, I mean their wellness centers and healing centers that have saunas. You can also find them there if you’re not able to get one for a home use. But saunas help with, again, with that lipolysis that sweating the detoxification. So it’s a great thing to add into a detox program. And then if you get a chance to do, massage and body work while you’re doing a program, that’s another way to help with detoxification because then you’re really, you can really tap into that lymph flow. So at the very least doing the dry skin brushing during a detox program, again, you’re getting exfoliating the skin, you’re helping with the lymph flow, the circulation in your body.

Dr. Cates: But you could also get some body work done, massage, lymphatic massage, all of that helps with your lymph flow, your circulation and even exercise also helps with lymph flow, so we don’t want to forget about that. And then last but not least, when we’re talking about a detox program, don’t want you to forget about the stress component. The clean mind as I talk about it in my book, that is an important part of a detoxification program is to figure out ways to incorporate mindfulness and stress management. Please do not forget this in your detoxification program. A lot of these tips and tools are in the clean mind section of my book, Clean Skin From Within, and I learned these when I was doing my Spiritual Psychology Program a Master’s Degree in Spiritual Psychology. Many of these tips and tools I learned there. So you can find things like learning about gratitude journal or forgiveness exercises, meditation, breath work exercises.

Dr. Cates: These are all really powerful tools and especially when you are doing a detox program. Sometimes emotional things come up and it’s really important to have these tools and resources available to do that. Now I know I’ve covered a lot today on all the different aspects of detoxification and cleansing and I could go on and on about more about this, but I would encourage you to join us in the Clean Skin from Within Facebook group. Just ask to join the group and you can, you can join in and we’re right now we’re doing the two week program and it’s free but if you’re joining after the fact after we got started it’s okay. You can still join in any time and get the resources and tools that we have in there. The bonus recipes and some of the shopping guides and some of the tools and resources we have in the Facebook group are available to you.

Dr. Cates: Plus I have all of that in my book Clean Skin From Within. You can get a copy of that and also follow the two week program and it is clean skin from within. and the focus is on the skin, but really from the inside out. And again, your skin is an outer reflection of inner health. So when your skin is healthy and glowing, it’s a really good sign that the inside is matching. So I encourage you to do a detoxification program, whether that’s my Clean Skin From Within program or another one. And I hope you have a very healthy 2020.

Transcript for Achieving Gut + Skin Balance

Dr. Cates: Hi there. I’m Dr. Trevor Cates. Welcome to The Spa Dr. Podcast. On today’s podcast we’re talking about how to achieve gut balance and how this impacts your skin. My guest is Dr. Mahmoud Ghannoum and he is the scientist that named the mycobiome. The mycobiome is the fungal community in the body. Well, why is this important well, stay tuned, I’m going to explain that as well. The Washington Post actually called him the scientist who is now known as the leading microbiome researcher in the world. He has published over 450 peer reviewed papers. His work has been cited over 21,000 times in literature he has been actively funded by the NIH, the NIH, the National Institutes for Health continuously since 1991 for his work on the fungal and bacterial communities in our body with over $25 million in NIH funding to date. Dr. Ghannoum lectures around the world on the microbiome and he is the founder of the antifungal clinical testing company, Next Trillion Sciences and has been involved in the development of 95% of antifungals that have come to market since the 1990s and I actually ask him about antifungals at the end of this interview. On today’s podcast, we discussed the difference between the microbiome and the mycobiome and how these play a role in your health, very important role in your gut, brain and skin health. Dr. Ghannoum shares best foods and lifestyle habits that help support the microbiome and mycobiome for optimal health and longevity. He’s got a book that’s now out about this as well, and he talks about about this new book and he’s just a wealth of knowledge, so I hope you enjoy this interview.

Dr. Cates: Mahmoud it’s so great to have you on The Spa Dr. Podcast. Welcome.

Dr. Ghannoum: Thank you. Thank you for having me. It’s great pleasure to be with you.

Dr. Cates: I’m so excited to have you on because you have been doing a lot of interesting research on something that I find completely fascinating and I myself have looked into a lot and that is having to do with the microbiome and the mycobiome and you have a, you’ve also done a paper publish a paper on the gut skin brain connection. And so let’s start with that. Let’s start about that connection because I think for so many years people thought of the skin as just being the superficial thing that’s not really connected to the gut and you know, the brain, like how is this all connected? So tell everybody how this comes together.

Dr. Ghannoum: Sure. You know a lot of the time people think of the gut brain access, but in fact there is gut skin brain access. We published a paper as you mentioned, inform theory of microbiology. Okay, well we showed that if you have an imbalance in the microbiome in the gut with respect to the micro organisms, what happens, it could affect your skin. Also because of the communication between the brain, the gut, also reflects in the skin. So really in a way we have communication between gut, skin and brain and there are evidence to show that people who, for example, there was a good study where people had acne and they took a probiotic in fact not prebiotic, probiotic, uh, bifidobacterium. And what they found that when they, the balanced their gut microbiome, the acne really got to reduce.

Dr. Ghannoum: Another very interesting study was, you know, people when they have UV exposure of the skin, how we lose some elasticity and this sort of thing, and a study was done where they showed that if you take probiotics to ensure that your gut microbiome balanced, you skin elasticity is maintained, even when you have some UV exposure. You know, so that, that’s really very interesting. You know, the other thing from the scientific point of view, I am as you know, professor at Case Western Reserve University, and what we have, we have a grant to look at psoriasis and we looked at the skin psoriasis and what we found that we compare affected versus unaffected areas. This is where you have the plaque and the lesions versus those that are not. And we found that there is imbalance in both the bacteria and fungal communities in the skin, in these psoriasis patients. So definitely there is a clear link between our gut skin as well as the brain.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, it’s amazing the, the information that’s coming out about the gut microbiome and the skin microbiome. And can you explain to everyone what the differences between the microbiome and the mycobiome and for some people that sounds like the exact same thing, but it is very, well not very different, but it is different.

Dr. Ghannoum: It’s different. You know, I completely understand why people sometimes think of the microbiome without thinking about the community except bacteria. Everybody used to talk about bacteria as being the main member of the microbiome and they really use the term microbiome and bacterium, in the same way. Okay. But research is showing that in addition to the bacterial community that live, let’s say in the gut, since we are talking a lot about the gut or the skin for that matter, it’s not only bacteria. We have bacteria, we have viruses, we have fungus as well. And the difference between them, we call it the mycobiome because mycology is the study of fungus. So I came out with this coined this term of mycobiome to describe the fungal community. Yeah. Yeah. To contrast with bacteria.

Dr. Cates: M Y. yeah. So that helps the spelling is different. So what, what led you to be so interested in the mycobiome?

Dr. Ghannoum: Well, you know, for years, I direct the center for medical mycology and I’ve been studying fungus for over 40 years, you know, and it took me back to when I first went to England to do my a doctorate where I was given a paper by my mentor You know, our advisor they come and tell you, what you are going to do, your doctorate on. So I looked at it and what it was, it was about a rabbit which was treated with an antibiotic. And lo and behold, that rabbit became more susceptible to fungal infections, especially candida and that taught me, you know that in our body, we have both communities living together and if one becomes imbalance, let’s say we use antibiotic, we kill all the bacteria, the fungus take the opportunity and they start to grow and causing carbon.

Dr. Ghannoum: So that was in 19, believe it or not, 74 up to 78 that’s what I spent my life studying. And then let’s, let’s come fast forward to around early 2000, 2008 I used to go to all these meetings and people talking about microbiome, meaning really bacteria. And then I tried to bring attention that we really need to look at these two communities because they work together in good and in bad. They could be helpful, but at the same time, when they are imbalanced or what we call this biosis, they will cause harm to us. That’s really what led me to uh, go into the study of not only the bacteria but the fungi of course, which is my specialty in 2000 and then I published the first paper on the mycobiome.

Dr. Cates: Right. Right. That’s so great. And I think we are shifting away from this idea that microorganisms are bad, right then that we understand now there’s so much research that we need balance that there are good ones, there are bad ones, there are ones that just are, they just exist. The commensal ones that need to be in the right balance and that there is this synergy that we need, and so how does the mycobiome play a role in our health?

Dr. Ghannoum: Which is very, very good question. And I really agree with you. We really need the balance. Now people, when they talk about candida, as you said, they always think, Oh it’s bad than use. This can be, that could cause candidiasis. It could cause, you know, various diseases. In fact, 50% of the people, the population have candida as a colonizer, which means it’s at low level. When it is present at low level it can help us, you know, it kind of breakdown the food ferment food, which gives food to the beneficial bacteria and that will really help our immune system and make us. So that’s if we have it at low level, the problem starts when we encourage the growth of this fungus and overgrows by getting rid of the beneficial organism. Then we are going to start to have digestive issues and other issues so it’s two sides of the story. They could be good when they are in balance, but when they go out of whack then it becomes bad.

Dr. Cates: So what are some of the symptoms that people should look for that could indicate that, there is an imbalance?

Dr. Ghannoum: You know, simply the constipation, bloating. You may have some time blood in the, the stool. If you have some inflammation you feel sometimes you have some pain for example. And there are studies to show that like for example, Crohn’s disease patients with their symptoms, inflammatory symptoms there is imbalance. So if you have any bad feeling, any of these symptoms, which are what as we said, we call them inflammatory symptoms, then you know there is something not right there and you need to try to adjust it.

Dr. Cates: Right, right. So and this does play a role on the skin cause we already talked about the gut skin connection. So if some, if the digestive system is off, if the microbiome of the gut is off then that could impact the skin as well. And this includes the mycobiome, the fungal.

Dr. Ghannoum: Hundred percent really. We actually completed a study as I mentioned in psoriasis and we look not only at the skin, a microbiota, but also we looked at the gut microbiota to see whether there is a relation and we showed that in cases of disease you have imbalance in both bacteria and fungus. Yeah. So it’s definitely the right way to look at it. Our gut could affect not only our digestive symptoms, but also our skin. Sometimes also some, sort of autism, Alzheimer, all of these diseases which are related to our brain. You know, degenerative diseases also are affected. So it’s really fantastic what’s happening now with our understanding of the microbiome. Because as you said, when you look at it, it’s not all bad. There is bad, but there is good. And we need to learn how we can keep, our gut balanced because that’s going to help us overall.

Dr. Cates: Right.

Dr. Ghannoum: Yeah.

Dr. Cates: So let’s talk about that. What, how does food play a role? The foods that we eat, how do they play a role and the mycobiome?

Dr. Ghannoum: Well, as you know our body requires carbohydrates, requires the proteins it requires as well as fat for, you know, our cells are made of this. So in a way you need to select the type of food. Like if we decide we want to go after carbohydrates, we need to select resistant starch because the resistant starch has these fibers which can be broken down by the microorganism in our gut, which are beneficial organism. And by doing this they are going to help our immune system on our wellness. However, if you eat something, let’s say red meat, okay, especially high fat red meat, what happens, you are feeding the bacteria that are pro-inflammatory, which means they increase our inflammation. So by selecting which food we eat, you are able to go some way to balancing the gut. You know, and I say some way because in addition to diet we really need to select some good lifestyle which we may be able to talk about because that also influenced our gut.

Dr. Ghannoum: Now with respect to the fungus can be that for example, how can we make sure it stays a colonizer and it’s helping us instead of working against us. Number one is that candida loves sugar, refined sugars are the best friend for candida, so we need to limit those low carb and that’s choose the right carb like as we said, the resistance stash for example. Now in addition, we need to have some lean proteins, good proteins from plants, from fish. This would really help us a lot as well as some poultry as well. Chicken and the sort of thing are beneficial. So by selecting the right type of food, it’s like a garden. You are feeding your garden and you are going to grow the nice, beautiful roses rather than all the weeds.

Dr. Cates: Right. So with the carbohydrates that are beneficial, would those be more of like the high fiber carbohydrates? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And so when you look at things like, the carbohydrates, high fiber carbohydrates, are we looking, you know, legumes and what are some of the best ones for us to eat?

Dr. Ghannoum: Yeah, legumes is one of them. There is also, you have resistance starch you’ll find that in bananas. Unripened bananas in Bali for example, it is there, you know, the other good fibers. Believe it or not, in pumpkin’s pumpkin’s they have real, they are rich in fiber. So these are good to feed our good micro-organisms or good microbiome in our gut, which again is going to help us balance.

Dr. Cates: Oh, that’s great. That’s great to hear about pumpkin, it seems to be really popular right now. Not pumpkin spice but actual pumpkin.

New Speaker: Yes. Yeah. I was looking at pumpkin recently because you know, we are near Thanksgiving and I looked at it has good fibers, had a lot of minerals as well as vitamins. So it’s really good, good stuff. It’s not just to have as decoration in the front of our houses.

Dr. Cates: Right, right. Absolutely. Okay. And so when we look at the microbiome and, um, and, and the impact it plays, it plays a role in our digestion, our immune system, our mood, all of that as well as our weight, too right?.

Dr. Ghannoum: Definitely. Oh, the way. You know, there was a study done in Spain of all places, and they looked at people who are obese compared them to people who are lean. And they found that there’s differences between them. People who are obese they tended to have high levels of ascomycota this is one of the phylum of fungi. As people who are lean, they have more zygomycota, you know, so there are different sort of different phylum, different members of the fungi and these, they tend to be different in obese versus those who are lean. And there was a study in the same study actually, where they looked at people who lost weight, they became lean. They really had an increase in one of the genus, in one of the a genus of the fungi like muka. So definitely we have a change and to be clear, it’s not the only change in the fungi, but also we see in obese patients they tend to have for example, high firmicutes which is a bacterial phylum. So definitely, there is a relation, as you said, between the gut microbiome and obesity and weight control.

Dr. Cates: And do you think that, and I’ve been reading that research as well, and do you think that that’s due to people’s diet? Do you think it’s a genetic factor or maybe a combination of the two?

Dr. Ghannoum: I really think a lot of the time our diet plays a really central role in controlling the, what you call our weight. Okay. In fact, in our diet, which is in the book, Total Gut Balance, which is going to come, we, and you mentioned, uh, we did this study where we put people in this diet and at the end of it they lost weight between two to 10 pounds in four weeks time. Now, this is one factor. The other factor, as we mentioned, lifestyle. Lifestyle is very, very important because you know, for example, it’s good to exercise because there are studies to show that if you exercise you are going to have better balance of your microbiome. Okay. So the other thing which is very, very critical is we need to take care of our stress. And you know very much, very well. We are all so stressed out. We work hard and the ladies, when they go and take care of, they work hard, they take care of the kids. They have to do all of this. I tell you, I once, maybe I’m going a side a little bit. I was once, the responsibility to take care of my kids and I told my wife, Oh my God, this is really hard. So we need to lessen the stress, on us because if we have stress because of the gut brain connection, we are going to have bad imbalance.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, I know your son. So I think that’s probably what the stress was about. We’re all stressed and certainly this time of the year too, we’ve gone through the holidays and that is an additional stress on the body and that can really, so now is the time to do kind of a reset right and get back on track. And so what are some of the things that you recommend as far as lifestyle changes in addition to diet? What are some of the things you think are particularly important?

Dr. Ghannoum: I mean, one of the first one is, as, as I mentioned, is exercise. We need to exercise. You don’t have to be really kill yourself. You know, people, sometimes they go from one, you know, a side of the pendulum to another. No, moderation say maybe 50 minutes, three times a week. If you don’t even go on to run, just go out and walk. This is really very important. So exercise is very important.

Dr. Ghannoum: Number two is we need to have to reduce stress. Some meditation, I started to do yoga about one and a half years ago because you know, I loved it. I never done before a yoga but now I go and the one and the half hour you are in the yoga class, you are just thinking about the move you are trying to meditate. I’m not thinking of where on the surface thing. And I find that to be very, very relaxed. I see. And my wife laughs at me because I’m the only male in there with all the woman. I gave a talk the other day, I said, at the big meeting, I said I am talking to the male audience, please take up yoga is very important. So these are the other thing which is very important. Sleep, you know, you need to try to have you know, seven to eight hours of sleep because this is also a good time to rejuvenate as you know better than me.

Dr. Ghannoum: Yeah. So all in all, if we try to take these moderate activities, it’s going to, with our diet you are going to have a really gut balance and therefore better GI symptoms or gastrointestinal symptoms that are going to be better, you can control your weight and also you will be happier all around.

Dr. Cates: And it’s so amazing that, that this concept of sleep and movement and meditation, yoga, that this plays a role in our microbiome and the mycobiome. But it’s true and there’s, I mean there’s a lot of good evidence to support it.

Dr. Ghannoum: I’ll tell you something, an evidence we had, we had a lady take our tests with biome test where it’s, your gut to report to look at the profile of your mycobiome, basically bacteria and fungi. And what we found that her profile was greatly imbalanced. So the other thing we do is we look at questionnaire to see what is she doing. We just spoke to diet. She eats a great food food that supports the balance of the gut. But when we look deeply into does she have stress? And she was extremely, severely stressed. So we figured that out. This is really what’s leading to her imbalance and we advise that, you know, all nutritionist advise it to try to, you know, relax, do meditation as we mentioned you know. So definitely there is evidence that this is what happens.

Dr. Cates: Yeah. And thank you for looking at this and writing your book on this important information. One of the things that you talk about is the, the gut biofilms and for people who aren’t familiar with this, can you explain what that is and how it builds up and what we can do about it?

Dr. Ghannoum: Sure. The best way to explain what is a biofilm is when we look on our teeth, the plaque in our teeth is a biofilm. So basically bacteria sticks to our teeth and gum and then they form what you call this biofilm. So what it is, organisms or micro-organisms, they come together and they bind together, they adhere together and they start producing these sugars or polysaccharides to cover them. It’s like as if they are, undercover, like you have jello and inside the jello you have a little m and m’s or raisins, the raisins are the organisms and the jello is the matrix which covers them and protect them. So we know about the mouth but until our publication in 2016 we did not know that there is really biofilm in the gut, especially formed by the pathogenic organism or organisms, micro-organisms that can cause disease. So what can we found that candida which is one of the fungus with ecoli and serratia marcescens two bacteria. They come together, they adhere, they start producing this protective layer and guess what? They are on our gut lining and they start to cause damage to that. And that’s where it becomes a problem where inflammation increase and this sort of thing. So that’s why we really need to have a way to try to eliminate this biofilm or what we call to make it simpler digestive plaque. It’s like the plaque in our teeth but instead its in our gut.

Dr. Cates: Right. And so they’re both bacteria and fungi that are involved in this biofilm, right? That, yeah. So it’s really like, it’s a combination approach that we need for, addressing these. Right. So a lot of times people focus on the bacteria but not on the fungi.

Dr. Ghannoum: Absolutely. Absolutely. And that’s why we really want it in the diet. To put some elements, like for example, apple cider vinegar is fantastic has been shown to get, eliminate the biofilm. Also you have garlic is fantastic. I know sometimes because of the smell, but it doesn’t matter, just have it and brush your teeth, it’s a great for our health. You know, coconut oil is another, a fact that that have been shown to work against biofilms. So we recommend these in the diet. In addition, I published a paper in April of this year, 2019, where we look at these organisms coming together. How can we break this biofilm and that paper, which was published, in 2019 showed that we select a probiotic we selected that has both bacteria and fungal probiotic strains like Saccharomyces for example. Saccharomyces is a good fungus. So again, which stresses that point, not all fungus, is bad.

Dr. Ghannoum:                   Fungi is really good sometimes. But in this case we found that Saccharomyces lactobacillus as well as bifidobacterium, they work together and they are able to break these pathogenic biofilms. And we showed that, really both in-vitro as well as enviable. So this is really a great way to eat the right to get rid of this biofilm, eat the right food, which has anti-biofilm activity and also enzymes, which is also part of the provider, which we have amylase which is also shown to break these biofilms. So a good combination.

Dr. Cates: So can I ask you, when it comes to, I know some doctors will treat with antifungals, the antifungal medications. And I know with antibiotics, we’ve seen that over use of antibiotics as medications has created dysbiosis imbalances. You’re killing off not only the harmful bacteria, but you’re killing off the good bacteria too. So it’s created some issues. And of course we know antibiotics still can be, helpful when indicated, but we need to be mindful of when we prescribe them. What about antifungal medications, are there concerns about those as well?

Dr. Ghannoum: You know, usually in general, a lot of medications now the studies are starting to show that they affect our they kill certain colonizer. So, so in the case of fungi, using an anti-fungal that is a broad spectrum. It may kill the beneficial organisms such as saccharomyces That’s why I think if you take an anti fungal agent, it’s good idea to try to take a probiotic to try to rebuild the beneficial fungi and bacteria in our gut. So yes.

Dr. Cates: Right. So, and that might include Saccharomyces boulardii something, something along those lines along with a probiotic. Okay. Yes. Great. So now I know with your diet, there are foods that you recommend to help improve the microbiome that, um, that maybe, you know, some people haven’t really that maybe I’ve got a little bit of a bad rep. So what are some of those foods?

Dr. Ghannoum: Yeah, I mean some of it is like, Oh, as you said with carbohydrates for example, people say, Oh, you should stop all carbohydrates, which is not true. I mean, low sugar is good, but it does not mean that you have low carbohydrate because you know, to make it simple and we have different types of carbohydrates, some of the carbohydrates, simple sugars, glucose, when we eat it, it goes into our intestine and our body is able to break it down and then it give us some energy, but also good could change into fat. Now instead of having these specialty, taking too much carbohydrate in one setting because your body cannot get rid of it and it’s going to go and change into fat, try to lower the amount of these. But take carbohydrates such as resistance starch, which we mentioned before, which will go through our intestine they are not broken down by us, but when they reach to the colon where all these good bacteria is there, they start to break it down. They are able to break it down. That’s why they call it resistance starch okay. But when they break it down, they produce all these small molecules or compounds, small compounds that are like, that are beneficial, such as short chain fatty acids. These are very good because they support our immune system. So it’s a matter of selecting the right food, which not eliminating all type of food. You cannot eat this, you cannot eat that, no just be selective, and that would be good.

Dr. Cates: Right. And you know, I’ve had some people tell me that when they eat carbohydrates or when they eat beans, for example, that they just don’t agree with them that they can’t eat them. So what do you think about talking to people about transition? Because for some people there dysbiosis, it takes a while to rebalance. So initially eating more of these carbohydrates, you know, high fiber foods might not feel that great as they’re rebalancing, as we’re rebalancing and getting a healthy gut microbiome. Right?

Dr. Ghannoum: You are absolutely right. That’s why when you start with any diet in that to be fair, you really need to take a time to transition. And we, for example, in the book, we give people a one week plan and then so that they can get used to the food and then after that they can adopt the diet for life. And the nice thing is the diet is flexible they kind of change and it’s not too restrictive. And I really agree with you. We need to give them this period. In fact, and we did the clinical trial where we had people, take a stool sample at baseline before they started up the diet so that we can look at the microbiome, both bacteria and fungi. And then we took another sample after two weeks and then a sample at the very end, but at the same time, and we looked at this, the profile, but at the same time we capture the gastrointestinal issues which you are referring to. For example, bloating. Okay. People go direct on fiber they feel really bloated. They don’t like it or they produce gas. So that’s why we noticed in this study, like the first week, people don’t feel, you know, some members they said, yeah, you know, we need some time. It’s not perfect. But then you start seeing this slight changes by two weeks and then by three and four weeks, they really reported great improvement. So it’s very, very important what suggested is you need to really ease into something new and not just jump like people tend to be too, you know, they are keen, they want to get better so they go all in. No try to transition slowly and you’ll be fine.

Dr. Cates: It’s, it’s so true. I’ve been seeing patients for almost 20 years now and there’s definitely, it’s, it’s so variable how people react to foods and that we need to be patient, but, but we do know the research continues to support things like these, you know, the high fiber, foods and beans and legumes and vegetables and how beneficial they are to our health. It sometimes it just takes them a while to adjust depending and everybody’s different. So, yeah, it takes a little while to, accommodate. And so is there anything that you suggest during that transition time to help people?

Dr. Ghannoum: I would start by don’t change completely your diet. Let’s start to use a little bit of fiber let’s say. Let’s start, if you are eating, a lot of people eating westernized diet. A lot of meat, invariably maybe every night or all at least four times, four nights a week or four days a week. Try to supplement it, take a little bit better food at the same time. Continue doing that and slowly, slowly what you are going think about it. It’s what we are going to do is again, we start to feed the good organisms in our gut, which is going to help us. So transition, I would say is the best way really too to ease on. Don’t like for example, if you will, haven’t had fruits and vegetables. I come from the Mediterranean, I love fruit and vegetables because it’s all over the place.

Dr. Ghannoum: But if you haven’t had this for a long time and then suddenly you start to take it in, it’s going to cause some loose, maybe stool and this sort of thing. So moderation, slowly, slowly go and start to adjust. And that’s why you have the first one or two weeks to ease into the diet and that will help you. And the good thing is you will, you’ll be able to change the fungus in your gut very fast. It is starting to show that’s fungi can change in a short term diet, where as the bacteria, it takes longer, longer. So this, by easing in, I think it’s going to help you.

Dr. Cates: Excellent. All right, well it’s been so great having you on the podcast. Thank you for all of your information. Will you tell everybody where they can find your book and learn more about you?

Dr. Ghannoum: Yeah. The book is called Total Gut Balance. You can find it on, Amazon as well as Barnes and Noble. There is also totalgutbook.com. I would like to have people to go to Dr. Microbiome drmicrobiome.com because I started a site where people can learn a lot different aspects, how to balance their gut, what type of food to have, what type of recipes. I think this would help them a lot.

Dr. Cates: All right. Fantastic. Well, thanks again for coming on and, and good luck with the new book.

Dr. Ghannoum: Thank you very much. It’s a great pleasure.

Dr. Cates: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dr. Ghannoum. To learn more about him you can go to thespadr.com go to the podcast page with his interview and you’ll find all the information and links there, including how you can get a copy of his book. And speaking of which, if you are on The Spa Dr. email list, if receive our emails we’re going to look check your email inbox because we’re going to be giving an opportunity for you to have a possibility of winning a copy, a free copy of his book.

Dr. Cates: So if you aren’t on my email list, now’s a great time to set up. You can go to thespadr.com to make sure that you sign up for our email, our emails that we send out. Or you could also take The Skin Quiz and you can go to theskinquiz.com take the online free skin quiz and find out what messages your skin’s trying to tell you about your health and what you can do about it. And then you’ll also start receiving our emails. We have special offers that we send only to our email recipients, and so make sure you’re on our email list at thespadr.com. And also I invite you to join us on social media. It’s a great way to engage with us and learn. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and YouTube, and I’ll see you next time on The Spa Dr. Podcast.