Top 10 Foods That DESTROY Your GUT

hello health champions science is only beginning  to uncover the importance of our gut health  

and our microbiome and food can have a lot  to do with that so the first thing we need  

to understand is what to eat or not to eat so  that we don't destroy the bacteria and upset  

that delicate balance a couple of hundred  years ago they came up with something called  

the germ theory they found out that there were  microorganisms pathogenic microorganisms meaning  

germs and bugs that cause disease but the  problem is it was kind of a one-sided view  

they only looked at bacteria and microorganisms  as bad and therefore they said basically  

just kill them all they cause disease  so let's just eradicate them if we can  

and so we started disinfecting surfaces we started  wiping everything down we started cleaning things  

and putting chemicals and alcohol and solvents  on on surfaces and then we found antibiotics  

and it took about 60 years of antibiotics  until 2001 when we started understanding  

more and more over a period of decades just how  important there is with a balance of bacteria so  

they founded coined the term microbiome to  sort of help us understand that there's an  

ecosystem biome basically means an ecosystem and  we have a microscopic ecosystem in our gut that  

is hugely important the bacteria are not bad they  can just be in balance or out of balance basically  

because our microbiome has an enormous influence  on our metabolism on our digestive function  

and on our immunity and the more they look  the more they find that a microbiome basically  

influences signaling and hormones and just about  every function in the body you want to think of a  

microbiome as a multi-species ecosystem so there's  a whole ecosystem living inside you and there's  

hundreds or even thousands of different species  down there they're depending on you but you're  

depending on them also and when everything  is working everyone's kept in balance then  

there is harmony in that system you have about 40  trillion bacteria in your gut and that's about the  

same number as the number of cells in your body  depending on whose count you put the most faith in  

the ones i've seen are about 40 trillion cells 40  trillion bacteria if you add that all up that's  

about five pounds of bacteria two and a half  kilograms of bacteria that's a good bit and then  

if we look at how much genetic material is it in  there so a human has about 23 000 genes but if you  

add up the gene pool for all the things living in  your gut you get more than 100 times more genetic  

material about three million genes between all of  these different bacteria and these three million  

genes these thousands of species they produce  thousands of different metabolites different  

waste products different chemicals some of  them benefit you some of those are vitamins  

or short chain fatty acids but others are toxic  waste that you have to get rid of and that's why  

it's so important to keep these things in balance  when the pathogenic bacteria start over-growing  

that's where you get an abundance of the toxic  metabolites that can hurt you and when you go  

to the bathroom know that 60 of the dry matter  of your feces of your stool that ends up in the  

toilet is actually bacteria and once we have a  balance what we're looking for there's somewhere  

around 85 percent of your bacteria should be the  beneficial ones and of those who can potentially  

be pathogenic and cause disease those should be  around 15. so as long as that ratio is in place  

then the healthy ones are going to eat enough  are going to consume enough of the resources  

that they're going to sort of keep the pathogenic  ones down that's how we have balance but if we eat  

the wrong things or if we take antibiotics  or if something else hurts that balance and  

then we get an overgrowth now is where we get  problems number one on the list would be sugar  

and i hope if you've been watching some of my  videos that you start getting the idea that sugar  

is not your friend and especially we're talking  about the glucose so regular table sugar is 50  

glucose 50 fructose and it's the glucose that  is the primary fuel for these bacteria because  

the vast majority of the bacteria in  your gut are an aerobes meaning they  

make their metabolism function without  oxygen and that means they primarily cleave  

glucose they use sugar for energy some  of these are obligate anaerobes meaning  

that oxygen actually hurts them but others  are sort of where they can use either one or  

even if they can't use oxygen at least oxygen  doesn't hurt them so there's different classes  

but the vast majority 99 to 99.9 percent function  without oxygen and that means they cannot use fat  

or protein they have to use glucose basically  and if we look for the fuel that's preferred by  

the different pathogenic versus beneficial the  glucose is more so preferred by the pathogenic  

and the fiber is more used by the beneficial so if  you're trying to re-establish balance or if you're  

trying to feed the beneficial ones more so then  you want to eat things like leafy green vegetables  

non-starchy vegetables things with lots of fiber  but there are low in glucose but also don't think  

that 100 of one is better and zero of the other  is better because it's all about balance we need  

all of them it's kind of like sun versus rain  that most people probably want sun a lot of the  

time but if you had 100 sun and no rain ever that  wouldn't work so well either and if you asking for  

rain and then you get a hundred percent rain for  a full year then you get pretty tired of that so  

everything works better in balance and so does  the microbiome food number two that destroys  

your microbiome is gluten and we're talking  about grains that contain gluten specifically  

grains that are used to bake bread because grains  containing gluten are the only ones that can get  

the bread to rise and wheat has been hybridized  specifically to get huge amounts of gluten that  

makes the bread very very fluffy in latin  gluten is means glue so it's the glue that  

holds the dough together to allow it to rise but  that also gives you an idea that glue is probably  

something that's going to maybe get you a little  sticky on the inside which is exactly what it does  

and anything that has gluten is also  going to be a grain with a lot of glucose  

and we talked on the previous slide about how the  glucose is what feeds a lot of these bacteria that  

you don't want 80 percent of grain for the most  part is glucose it's starch that's basically just  

glucose linked together and very quickly starts  breaking into glucose the biggest focus on gluten  

has been because of people with celiac disease and  these are people with a severe allergy a severe  

sensitivity to where they have even a smidgen just  a crumb a few milligrams of gluten and their whole  

body just blows up it reacts very violently so for  those people you can't even have a crumb but then  

it's all the other people and there's something  called non-celiac sensitivity so even if you don't  

know that you're having a symptom about 70 percent  of the population are sensitive to gluten and  

their reaction is going to vary so some of these  people know that they do a lot better avoiding  

gluten and others it could be sort of subclinical  it hurts them it causes little inflammation but  

they don't really knowingly suffer from it day to  day and then what about fiber so glucose and fiber  

both feed bacteria but it seems like the fiber  is better at keeping a balance so we can feed  

more of the beneficial bacteria with fiber so back  when humans didn't eat grain and we probably ate  

some tubers and some non-starchy vegetables and  some leaves and some leafy greens we probably got  

a ton of fiber and very little glucose so if  we look at these two breads there's obviously  

a huge difference because this has virtually  no fiber and all the glucose this one still has  

almost the same amount of glucose but it has tons  of fiber so that fiber is going to help offset  

the glucose in this loaf on top a little bit more  but again it depends on where you are on your  

carbohydrate load if you're insulin resistant  then either one of these two has way too much  

carbohydrate for you to be able to reverse  that condition number three is fried food  

and fast food processed foods and someone noticed  that they ate fast fruit and fried food for a week  

and they checked their gut bacteria before  and after and they lost 33 of the species so i  

don't know what that means in terms of upsetting  the overall balance but that's pretty dramatic  

that you're killing off a lot of species and why  is that a bad thing because the healthier your gut  

the better the variety that tends to always be the  case the more variety of species you have the more  

input there is the more they're able to balance  each other other reasons to avoid fast food fried  

food processed food is that it's typically going  to contain sugar it's going to be lacking in fiber  

it's going to have chemicals preservatives  emulsifiers artificial this or that and  

the vast majority of it is also going to contain  wheat which has the gluten in it as well here's  

a headline i found when i was looking at this  stuff it said new study finds high fat diet alters  

gut microbiome so this was someone who had  published an article referencing some study  

and based on this headline that looks pretty  dramatic that looks like high fat would be a  

really bad thing but then when you look into it  it was actually wasn't high fat it was high in  

omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid that means  plant fats processed plant fats and then just  

to show how little they knew about what they were  covering in this article they went on to say that  

these high omega-6 oils were things like canola  and flax oil and i'm not a fan of canola but it is  

not by far the highest in omega-6s there are some  that are far worse and flax is one of the best  

oils as long as it's not rancid flax has very  very little it has four times more omega-3 it  

has the best omega-3 to omega-6 ratio of anything  out there so what they meant to say in the article  

which they failed is that the high omega-6 oils  are the problem for the gut microbiome but those  

are things like sunflower oil safflower oil soy  and corn oils which have about 50 to 70 percent of  

all the fat in that oil is omega-6s and this again  illustrates that we have to understand enough  

about the basics that we can understand if the  bigger picture makes sense because otherwise  

they're always going to keep throwing things like  this at us and the headlines look so scary but  

these are meant by people who are looking  for sensationalism they're looking for these  

things to scare us and upset us and confuse us  number four is alcohol and when we drink alcohol  

especially large amounts this is kind of dose  dependent it changes the microbiome and they're  

not really sure about the exact mechanism  but there are a few things we know happen  

alcohol increases the intestinal permeability so  it makes the gut more leaky and when things leak  

through that causes more inflammation more immune  reactions more sensitivities and inflammation as  

we know is not a great thing for the gut we also  know that alcohol kills beneficial bacteria so  

alcohol is a disinfectant we use it to clean  things so obviously by the time it gets down  

there it will be diluted but it still can  kill bacteria especially beneficial one  

food number five that destroys your gut is soy  it's been found that it decreases it interferes  

with the lactobacillus and the bifida bacteria  these are two of your most important beneficial  

ones and soy is really interesting because  it's one of these foods that have been promoted  

universally as a healthy thing just get more of it  and you'll get healthier and we got this idea from  

japan primarily because they were eating more  soy than the united states and the western europe  

and they had less disease so someone connected  the two and said it's the soy if you eat more soy  

you get healthy they didn't really look at all  the other factors that the japanese were eating  

way way way less sugar and grain especially gluten  grains but we got the idea that soy was good  

but we have to keep in mind that those countries  where they ate more soy they never ate it like  

this they never eat it like we do they eat organic  and fermented back then when that was part of the  

culture and then soy can be a good thing because  if it's fermented then it's partially broken down  

there are enzymes and bacteria that are helping  you digest it and those cultures ate it primarily  

as tempeh miso kimchi natto etc but when we  eat it in the western world we first of all eat  

genetically modified because virtually all the soy  grown is gmo and then we eat it processed right we  

don't have enzymes and bacteria we have industrial  equipment and chemicals break it down so they have  

things like textured vegetable protein and it's  used as an additive and we eat soybean oil etc  

but that's not the way that it has been consumed  there was a reason these cultures used it for  

hundreds or thousands of years and they learned  that the fermented was the way to do it there  

was a reason they figured that out right so soy is  very very difficult to break down and it will do  

damage to your gut among other things food number  six is dairy a lot of people i come across have  

sensitivities to dairy it could be subtle could be  dramatic and the most common thing is not lactose  

intolerance it's because there are proteins  in there that you develop sensitivities to  

and some of those proteins can also be  specifically irritating to the gut lining they  

can promote leaky gut and irritation and one  of the biggest problems that we tolerated so  

poorly is pasteurization that means that they  superheat it they flash pasteurized they heat  

the milk for a very short time trying to kill off  the bacteria but when they do that they also kill  

off all the enzymes and all the bacteria that you  want that would help you digest that food and in  

heating it they also alter some of the proteins  because proteins change configuration they change  

properties when you heat them that's how you cook  meat okay the the protein structure changes when  

you heat it so i recommend that if you're going  to do dairy that you do raw or fermented primarily  

in some states it's legal to get raw milk  in others it's not and if you can't then  

get fermented which means that you make you buy  yogurt or you make yogurt you add some bacterial  

culture that can bring it back to life with all  the enzymes and the bacteria in it so these are  

things like yogurt and kefir and buttermilk and  also i find that at least in my clinic that almost  

100 percent of people do great with butter because  what you're reacting to is primarily proteins  

if you're lactose intolerance it's in the sugar  but it's not the butter fat it's not the milk  

fat that you're reacting to and butter has just  small small traces of milk protein left not enough  

to hurt the vast majority of people if you are  extremely sensitive or you just meant to make it  

extra short and play it safe you can go for  ghee which is clarified butter and then there  

is basically zero of those milk proteins left  and what about cheese it is also a very common  

sensitivity but it's not nearly as common as  with pasteurized milk i would say more than 90  

percent of people do poorly on pasteurized milk  on cheese i would say it's maybe 50 50 maybe even  

that 70 percent of people do pretty well on cheese  especially if it's a good quality meaning not the  

slices with mixed in chemicals and and milk and  things like that but a good quality aged cheese  

most people do okay food number seven is gmos and  whenever i bring that up there's always a lot of  

people commenting and saying that oh there's no  evidence for that well here's how i look at it  

i think it's safe to say that mankind has put some  stress on planet earth in the last few hundred  

years right we lived here we didn't have much  of an impact but just in the last 200 150 years  

we've had a huge impact we're talking how we're  changing climate we're influencing ecosystems  

we're changing huge aspects of the planet and  most of that is because we're very short-sighted  

we are often greedy we have a lack of judgment of  the impact in the longer term in a sense we love  

to play god we think we're so smart that if we  can change something we should but i think of it  

a little differently i think no matter what you  call the creator or your idea of the creator or  

whatever put this planet here whatever mechanism  or principle brought that by i think that creator  

did something pretty much okay i don't think  that it's going to need our help when it put  

all of the dna and all the species together i  think that was pretty much okay i don't think  

that it was looking it or he was looking for human  help to speed up the process to fix the things  

that that the creator had failed  so when people say that there is no  

evidence i would just say there's no evidence yet  and i think the magnitude of what we're playing  

with with gmos it's on a scale where we can't  afford to make a mistake we can't afford  

to say oops 30 years down the road and some of  the other concerns are that a lot of the gmos are  

grown with glyphosate so there's another toxic  chemical that's associated with these gmo foods  

and we do know that there is such a thing as gene  transfer so when they're manipulating the genes  

in a plant that we're going to eat they  are creating a genetic sequence that never  

existed before this can be some combination of  genetic material that the world has never seen  

and i think it happens a certain way by chance  and i think it happens sort of risky when we do  

it on purpose and then these genes can shift  so these genes inside the food can transfer  

and move into bacteria remember we have over a  hundred times more genetic material in our gut and  

there is a definite possibility even if it's not  a probability even if it doesn't happen in a year  

maybe it happens in 30 years who knows but genes  can transfer from the genetic material in food  

into the genetic material in the bacteria and  now create species that we really don't want  

and even if there's no definite  evidence of health consequences  

there is strong suggestions that this will  disrupt the microbiome number eight thing to avoid  

is tap water and they do a great job of cleaning  up and recycling water but in that water there's  

going to be a tendency for bacteria to live  so on purpose they add chlorine and that's  

not a terrible idea because i'd rather have  a little bit of chlorine than a really toxic  

bacterial soup coming out of my tap so they  add chlorine or something called chloramine  

but think about why they're doing this what's the  purpose of adding chlorine to the water it's to  

kill bacteria so if it can kill the bacteria in  the water it can certainly also kill off some of  

the bacteria in your gut so what we want to do  is we want to let them add the chlorine to the  

tap water because that's a public health issue  but we have to remove the chlorine on our end  

with the filter you could buy bottled water but  then you're typically going to be wasting a lot of  

plastic and it's a much better way to actually get  a home filter if you can afford one if you live in  

a place where you're going to be for a while it's  actually the cheapest in the long run it's get a  

whole house filter you spend some more money up  front you're set for five seven eight years and  

then you only replace filters very very rarely if  you can't do a whole house right now then you do  

the tap and the shower filter because if you  shower the chlorine in the water is going to be  

absorbed through your skin so taking a shower for  a few minutes is like drinking a few glasses of  

tap water basically and if you can't do the shower  either then just do the tap do at least that much  

and it's especially important in certain areas  where they use more chlorine so where i live for  

example they will use a lot more chlorine in the  summer because the warmer weather and the warmer  

water will grow more bacteria when it's really  cold it's not so critical but just know that they  

need to add chlorine and you need to take it  out number nine is antibiotics and hormones  

so even though antibiotics are so hugely overused  on humans we're taking hundreds of times more than  

we need to eighty percent of all antibiotics  still go to animals to things that we are  

producing for food and it's kind of strange to me  that almost every label i see says something like  

no antibiotics ever no hormones ever everyone's  denying that there is ever any hormones  

used in food and yet these 80 percent of the  antibiotics produced becomes 13 million kilos  

and this is something that's usually a dose  is measured in milligrams so a whole course of  

antibiotics might be one gram or in in the  neighborhood on that scale so that's 13  

billion courses of antibiotics that are fed to  animals so there just doesn't seem to be a match  

between how much is being sold and the claims  made so am i saying that everyone's lying  

no i'm not saying everyone's lying but i do think  that there is a good chance of a lot of people  

lying about the labeling because this is so  prevalent and the best way it's not guaranteed  

because they could be lying somewhat about that  too but the best way that you can protect yourself  

is to buy organic and do the research that  you can about where the food comes from  

now here's an interesting one because red  meat was on every list that i found when  

they try to spell out the foods that hurt your  bacterial flora your microbiome but then when you  

read through what they had to say about the red  meat none of them said that it hurt the microbiome  

what they were saying was that the bacteria  in your gut could produce something called  

tmao trimethyl amine and oxide so the name is not  important but this is a chemical that are made by  

your gut bacteria and it uses raw materials  that are primarily found in animal products  

like lecithin carnitine and choline and all  of these are important nutrients so again i  

think they're taking one little piece out of a  haystack and and blowing it out of proportion  

so first they put it in a list that have foods  that are supposed to hurt your microbiome  

then they say no it doesn't hurt your  microbiome it increases the levels of tmao  

and that is associated with cardiovascular disease  right again they're taking one little piece out  

but what i see is that the people who go low  carb high fat the winds who cut back on sugar  

and grain they typically eat more meat rather  than less and all of their health markers  

reverse they scare us saying that it will cause  cardiovascular disease and yet we see the exact  

opposite and not only in people's weight patterns  and how they feel but every single blood marker  

the glucose the a1c the triglycerides the  insulin all of the things that are important for  

cardiovascular disease they actually get better  when you eat more red meat rather than sugar and  

grains so i think better questions that we would  ask would be what about the microbiome diversity  

the people who had the cardiovascular disease  and the higher levels of tmao what did their  

gut bacteria look like because if it's the gut  bacteria that makes it and they have an imbalance  

and they're eating too much sugar and grain then  that is probably going to affect the microbiome  

and also we want to ask if we eat that meat did  it come from a healthy animal how was that raised  

does that meat have a healthy omega-6 to omega-3  ratio a one-to-one or is it grain-fed and have  

fats that contribute to insulin resistance number  10 thing to avoid is artificial sweeteners and  

sugar and artificial sweeteners tend to show up in  every single one of my videos because there's just  

nothing good about them they are toxic these  are toxic in very very small quantities sugar  

is toxic in high quantities so based on research  they're not sure of the mechanism but they have  

found very consistently that artificial sweeteners  have an overall negative impact on your gut health  

it has been shown that it does alter the  microbe balance the ratio of the different  

species it contributes to glucose intolerance  the very thing that it's supposed to fix  

that it's supposed to replace sugar so that you  get healthier glucose handling it actually worsens  

your glucose situation even though it has no  glucose in it it just messes with the physiology  

so badly and it increases the rate of metabolic  disease and none of this is very surprising  

if we remember that the artificial sweeteners  basically all derived from pesticides they're very  

chemically related to pesticides things that  are designed to kill other things if you enjoy  

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