William Davis | Super Gut | Talks at Google

1. 0:00 – 0:09

   Intro

   1. NGNadia Gil0:02

      [on hold music]

2. 0:09 – 2:07

   Why Dr. Davis shifted from cardiology to microbiome-focused self-care

   1. NGNadia Gil0:09

      Hello, everyone. Welcome to Talks at Google. I'm Nadia Gil, and it's my pleasure to introduce our speaker today. Dr. William Davis is a cardiologist and a New York Times best-selling author of the groundbreaking book Wheat Belly and three other New York Times bestsellers, such as Wheat Belly Cookbook and Wheat Belly Total Health. He's written seven books about how to stay healthy or be on your way to health. Today, he's going to talk to us about his new book, Super Gut. Dr. Davis is a graduate of the St. Louis University School of Medicine with training in internal medicine and cardiovascular disease. He also has advanced training in angioplasty at the Case Western Reserve University Hospitals, where he also served as Director of the Cardiovascular Fellowship and Assistant Professor of Medicine. Please welcome our speaker, Dr. William Davis, for his Google Talk, Super Gut: A Four-Week Plan to Reprogram Your Microbiome, Restore Health and Lose Weight. Dr. Davis.

   2. WDDr. William Davis1:36

      Thank you, Nadia, and thank you to the Google Talks team. So I practiced cardiology for many years. You can see I've drifted a long way off from that kind of thing, but I, I want to pass on some of the very important lessons I've learned over the last several years that started with this idea of eliminating wheat and grains because of what agribusiness did to that plant, essentially created a new [audio glitch] laboratory, but it left some residual problems. And I'm always looking for s- better solutions so that you can be healthy without

3. 2:07 – 4:09

   The “internal environment” is changing: loss of microbial species diversity

   1. WDDr. William Davis2:07

      the doctor or the healthcare system. So I'm a... I, I try to champion ways that you and I can be healthy without the interference of the healthcare system. That's what Super Gut is taking further. We all know that we've changed the external environment. We've got an acidifying ocean. The pH is dropping. The coral reefs are dissolving. The polar ice caps are shrinking. You're no stranger to violent storms and wildfires. Well, the same kind of dramatic change in the external environment has occurred in our internal environment, specifically in the internal microbiome. That is, the collection of microbes that live in and on our body. Now, of course, you don't have wildfires and hurricanes in your body, right? The changes that have occurred in the human microbiome, specifically the intestinal microbiome, where most creatures are concentrated, is that we've lost species. We've lost important species that did, did, uh... performed functions, healthy functions for the human body, and we've also allowed proliferation of unhealthy species. Now, we're only gonna talk about the first category today, that is lost species, just for the sake of time. And in future, you can, uh, uh, uh... maybe we'll do another presentation about the proliferation of unhealthy species, 'cause that's a really important topic as well. But today we'll focus on this idea that we've lost species important to human health. So as the years have passed, over the tens of thousands of years, there's been a dramatic reduction in so-called species diversity in the human intestinal microbiome. That is, we've lost numerous species, hundreds, maybe more species, and modern people have very little diversity, much fewer numbers of microbes, much fewer different species. Well, why is that? Why have we lost these important microbes? Well, antibiotics. So

4. 4:09 – 6:41

   What’s driving microbiome disruption: antibiotics, birth practices, additives, drugs, and chemicals

   1. WDDr. William Davis4:09

      it's not uncommon. F- by age 40, you've probably taken, on average, 30 courses of antibiotics. For every thousand Americans, 800 prescriptions for antibiotics are written every year. 800 per 1,000. And the effects of antibiotics are not transient. They can often be long-s- term or even permanent. A third of Americans are now born by C-section and don't have the benefit of passing through the birth canal to acquire a mom's microbiome. More and more children are being formula fed because of the pressures of modern life on mothers. We're exposed to food additives in processed foods, especially emulsifying agents. These are long, uh, uh, c- these are compounds like carboxymethylcellulose or polysorbate 80. Synthetic sweeteners in your diet cola, such as aspartame and sucralose, also change the microbiome dramatically. Many drugs change the intestinal microbiome, especially drugs that block stomach acid, like Prilosec and Protonix and ranitidine. Statin cholesterol drugs change the intestinal microbiome. These common anti-inflammatory drugs are very destructive, but they also change the human microbiome. Even antidepressants change the human microbiome. How about water that contains chlorine or fluoride? Or how about heavy metals like mercury in fish or cadmium in shellfish? All those factors also dramatically change the intestinal microbiome. We all swim in a sea, sadly, of herbicides and pesticides in our food, air, and water. Glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, is also an antibiotic, but it's an antibiotic of the worst kind because it kills healthy species and doesn't kill unhealthy species. So glyphosate essentially selects for the species you don't want. And then of course, if you inherit at least some of your microbiome from your parents, grandparents, well, they had disrupted microbiomes also. So this effect of a disrupted microbiome compounds with each passing generation. It gets worse and worse. So modern people have lost numerous micro, uh, microbes from our gastrointestinal tracts. Now, one of the most important species, so there's many species lost, but let's talk, t- today we'll talk about two species

5. 6:41 – 8:13

   Lost keystone microbe #1: Lactobacillus reuteri—and how modern people lost it

   1. WDDr. William Davis6:41

      we've lost. One of the most important is Lactobacillus reuteri, named after the German scientist who discovered this microbe, uh, Dr. Gerhard Reuter. Well, this is a ubiquitous mammalian microbe. So if we were to sequence the intestinal microbes in, uh, indigenous populations, say, in New Guinea, these are people who didn't take antibiotics, don't chlorinate their drinking water, don't take statin cholesterol drugs [laughs] , don't take ibuprofen. They live out in the wild. They shower... I, I'm sorry, they, they bathe in a river. They dig into dirt for roots and tubers. They spear or club an animal to, to eat it, often eat the intestine and liver raw. Well, these people all have Lactobacillus reuteri, 100% of the, the population sequenced and looking for reuteri have this microbe. Likewise, your dog, the mouse [laughs] in your, in your cellar, a raccoon outside, a chipmunk outside your window, they all have reuteri. But it's us as modern people who have lost it. The vast majority of people, best estimate over 90% of modern people, have lost Lactobacillus reuteri for all those reasons I, I, I listed, especially antibiotics, because Lactobacillus reuteri seems to be unusually susceptible to antibiotics. So here we are, 2022, most of us have lost this very important microbe. But it also can serve as an illustration, a prototype, for

6. 8:13 – 10:44

   Extended fermentation method: 36-hour “yogurt” to amplify reuteri counts

   1. WDDr. William Davis8:13

      what happens when you restore it. We're going to restore it, though, by an odd technique. We're going to ferment it in yogurt. Doesn't have to be yogurt. It can be other foods if you don't like to be exposed to dairy. But let's use dairy only because it's a good way to illustrate this principle and because dairy is a very forgiving fermentation vehicle. But we're not gonna ferment it like other people do when they make yogurt. We're going to ferment for a long time. That is, in this case, 36 hours. Here's the curve of bacterial reproduction. Along the x-axis, you can see the amount of hours. Well, if we allow this microbe, so Lactobacillus reuteri doubles every three hours. So microbes don't have sexual reproduction, right? There's no mommy and daddy microbes, right? [laughs] So they have asexual reproduction. That is, one microbe becomes two, two becomes four, and so on. So if reuteri requires three hours to double, we're going to ferment for 12 doublings or 36 hours. And you can see the shape of the curve, that there's not a real increase in microbial counts until about hour 33. And then at hour 36, when we stop fermentation, we've performed a method called flow cytometry on our yogurts, and we get around 260 billion counts of reuteri per half cup serving. Now, now compare that to how it's done in commercial yogurt production, the stuff you buy in the supermarket. One, they're not doing, they're not making it with reuteri. They're making it with some, uh, other microbes that are kind of ho-hum, by the way, not very interesting, don't have many interesting effects. So we're gonna choose a much more interesting and essential microbe, Lactobacillus reuteri. We're going to ferment for a long time. But look what they do in commercial yogurt production. They typically ferment for four hours. Well, you can imagine if your microbe doubles every three hours, after four hours, you've got nothing. A lot of home yogurt makers will ferment for 12 hours. You can still see it's along the flat part of the curve. You've got nothing. It's this prolonged fermentation we're going to use that I believe is the reason why you get these very large health benefits when you do this. So how does this work, and what does it, does, what does it do? So we're going to ferment Lactobacillus reuteri, replacing a microbe lost by the majority of modern people. It takes up residence, oddly, in the

7. 10:44 – 11:45

   How reuteri may act in the body: upper-GI colonization, vagus signaling, and oxytocin

   1. WDDr. William Davis10:44

      upper GI tract as well as the colon. Most microbes prefer the conditions in the human colon, but this microbe likes the upper GI tract, and that's very important for another issue, and that is one of the problems that we won't talk much about today, is that stool species like E. coli and Pseudomonas and Klebsiella, these are species that are, uh, typically supposed to stay in the colon, and modern people have ascended into the small bowel. Well, this is a great advantage for reuteri because it takes up residence in the small bowel, and it inhibits the proliferation of those stool microbes and tries to protect your small bowel. So reuteri takes up residence in the entire length of the GI tract. It sends a signal by the vagus nerve, through the vagus nerve, up into the chest, through the neck, up to the brain, and it tells your brain, the hypothalamus and the pituitary glands, tells your brain to release the hormone oxytocin. Now,

8. 11:45 – 14:48

   Reported effects of restoring reuteri: social, skin, appetite, sleep, strength, and immunity

   1. WDDr. William Davis11:45

      I bet a lot of you have heard of oxytocin because you're of- it's often labeled the hormone of love and affection and empathy. So what happens when we do this prolonged fermentation with this unique microbe, Lactobacillus reuteri, lost by the majority of modern people? Well, as you'd expect, people experience an increase in empathy, a desire for connecting with other people. Greater ability to see another person's point of view. Reduction in social anxiety in social settings, like a, like an office party or, or a n- neighborhood get-together. There's a-- The ladies love this part. There is an explosion in the deposition of collagen in the dermis, and as a result, people begin to lose their wrinkles. It takes eight or more weeks to start, but it's a wonderful, natural means of getting rid of aging skin. And skin becomes moister also. There's an acceleration of healing. If there's a skin wound, for instance, whether it's you cut yourself by accident or scraped your knee or had a post-operative incision, healing time is cut by about 35%. There's a wonderful reduction in appetite. Food still tastes great, but you can walk past that plate of donuts at the office without even looking at it. It puts you in control of appetite and your diet and food choice. I'm a chronic insomniac. I have a hard time sleeping more than four or five hours. I'm watching TV, reading books in the middle of the night. I eat the reuteri yogurt, I sleep like a baby, nine hours straight through, vivid, colorful dreams. And those of us who wear the various actigraphic devices, like an Apple Watch or an Oura Ring or a WHOOP, we see about a 20% or more increase in the duration of REM sleep, rapid eye movement sleep. That's the restorative phase of sleep, you may know, during which we organize our thoughts, run through traumatic events, and maintain mental health better. So an extension of REM could be very, very important. There is a wonderful restoration of youthful muscle and strength. So as we age, we lose about a third, sometimes more, of our strength and muscle mass. Well, reuteri, via oxytocin, can restore that. Now, if you, if you couple this with a little strength training, you'll be astounded at the results. You can gain pounds and pounds and pounds of muscle. So if there's weight gain on this, it's not from fat. It's loss of fat coupled with increase in muscle. And the ladies-- especially a point for females, there is a marked preservation of bone density, protecting you long-term from osteopenia, osteoporosis. There is a heightening of the immune response. This may be among the most potent things we can do to boost immunity against viruses, bacteria, and potentially improve immunosurveillance against the appearance of cancer cells. Now, think about this. Smoother

9. 14:48 – 16:19

   Example outcome and broader program context beyond reuteri

   1. WDDr. William Davis14:48

      skin, accelerated healing, deeper sleep, restoration of youthful muscle and strength and bone density. Is this age reversal? I think it is. Now, this is anecdote, but if you see all the people in my au- in my, uh, following, people who follow my programs who do this, you will see people who look younger. And of course, if we dug deeper, we would see that they have many aspects of youthfulness, like that increase in muscle. Here's a woman, one of the first people who did this, a woman named Leslie. She was 65 years old at the time. This is a couple of years ago. Now, i-i-in, uh, in the f- uh, interest of full disclosure, she did more than reuteri. She did my full program, which involves elimination of all wheat and grains, this agribusiness garbage that, uh, they created. We replaced nutrients, a handful of nutrients l- uh, m- lacking in modern life, like magnesium, for instance, because we drink filtered water, which removes all magnesium. Vitamin D, because we live indoor lives for the mar- most part, may live in a northern climate where the sun is weak. And many of us are over 40, uh, when we lose the ability to activate vitamin D in the skin, largely. So here she is at 65. She did the program, lost a bunch of weight. Here she is a few months later. She's 65. So she, she's not only younger, but she's also healthier. But you can see the dramatic effects, especially evident on the skin. So that's one-- the effects of restoring one lost species, Lactobacillus reuteri. Let's

10. 16:19 – 18:53

    Lost microbe #2: Bifidobacterium infantis—why it matters for babies

    1. WDDr. William Davis16:19

       talk about another lost species, lost by most infants, babies, Bifidobacterium infantis. So Bifidobacterium infantis is very important for an infant's neurological development and growth. But 90% of infants don't have it anymore. And infantis is important because if a baby breastfeeds, which is a very great advantage for the infant, breast milk contains something called human milk oligosaccharides, which are essential for, uh, an infant's growth and neurological development. Well, if the baby doesn't have infantis, it's going to struggle to digest those oligosaccharides. More likely to have watery stools, more frequent stools, and it won't grow as well, and it won't have, uh, as great, uh, as better, uh, neurological development. Now, how many human milk oligosaccharides are included in synthetic formula? Zero. So br- being breastfed and having Bifidobacterium infantis colonize the infant's gastrointestinal tract is a huge advantage. So what happened? What, what happened to Bifidobacterium infantis? Well, many moms, many young women who become pregnant and deliver a child didn't have it themselves. Maybe th- this woman took antibiotics for a urinary tract infection, and sh- if she doesn't have it, she can't pass it on to the child. I don't know if you know this, but mother and child are virtually always given antibiotics at time of delivery. Even with a natural vaginal birth, mom is given an antibiotic, and the baby's given an antibiotic to prevent beta streptococcal infection. So both mom and baby come away from a hospital delivery having received antibiotics, and one of the casualties can be loss of this crucial species, Bifidobacteria infantis. Of course, if mom delivers the baby via C-section, which is a third of all pregnancies and deliveries now, the baby is deprived of passage through the birth canal and does not acquire infantis and other microbes by, by that route. And then of course, given pressures of modern life and the difficulties for, uh, modern women to, uh, continue to breastfeed for entire, for two years, which would be ideal, uh, children are often hastily transitioned to bottle feeding and synthetic formula, in which case they're not getting human milk oligosaccharides and then don't have infantis. So what happens when you

11. 18:53 – 21:27

    Effects of restoring infantis in infants: digestion, sleep, microbiome shifts, and long-term outcomes

    1. WDDr. William Davis18:53

       restore this lost microbe lost by 90% of modern infants? Well, the baby is better able to use the nutrients in breast milk, and there's less colic, less fussiness. The, the pH of the infant's poop approximates the pH of 100 years ago when people were healthier than we are today, and there's less diaper rash as a result. Babies are more likely to sleep through the night. Isn't that incredible? And they're, they're likely to take longer naps. They have 50% fewer bowel movements, thereby 50% fewer diaper changes for mom and dad, so an average of four per day down to two per day. There's an incredible and a very impressive 93% reduction in unhealthy bacterial species. These are the species like E. coli and Klebsiella we mentioned. And there's less risk of this awful condition called necrotizing enterocolitis, more common in newborn-- I'm sorry, in, uh, in premature babies, but can occur in full-term newborns also. This is a devastating diagnosis where the babies has to have part of their intestine removed, and there's a 30% likelihood of not surviving, uh, 30% mortality. Restoring Bifidobacterium infantis quite markedly reduces the likelihood of an infant developing necrotizing enterocolitis, so big effects of restoring this microbe lost by the majority of, of infants. Now, as the child becomes older, it's less likely to have asthma, less nasal allergies. There's less likelihood of developing an autoimmune disease like rheumatoid arthritis or Hashimoto's thyroiditis or lupus. They tend to have less abdominal complaints from irritable bowel syndrome, and they have a higher IQ. They're less likely to become obese. So this one microbe restored to a newborn a- and a young infant has lifelong... This is not just about fewer diaper changes. It is about that too, but it's about lifelong consequences for this person. Here's a, a profile of what happens to the microbes in stool. On the right in the purple represents the proliferation of infantis. In other words, infantis, when restored, comes to dominate the microbiome of the inf-- this is not true in adults, this is true in infants, but it reflects, it illustrates just how critical

12. 21:27 – 23:29

    Restoring infantis via the mother: fermentation amplification and maternal benefits

    1. WDDr. William Davis21:27

       it is for an infant to have that microbe restored. Now, let's go one better. So you could give it to the baby. Why not give it to mom? Why not? That's the strain that, uh, has all this evidence, the EVC001 strain. It's, it's available commercially as a product called Evivo, E-V-I-V-O. I have no reason to tell you that. I have no association with the company, just a cool product. So I get this microbe, and then as we talked about with reuteri, we put it through extended fermentation to allow repeated bacterial doublings to get bigger numbers than provided in the low in, uh, uh, low-potency probiotic product. And mom eats it before she delivers a child, right? She can eat it when she's not pregnant. She can eat it when she's pregnant. She, by taking it orally, she's going to populate her birth canal and her breasts, as well as her, uh, oral cavity, skin. So she'll be a vehicle for Bifidobacterium infantis, and when delivery time comes, she gives that microbe to her baby as it was supposed to have been done, right? The baby gets it by passage through the birth canal, breastfeeding, and contact with its mother. Now, even mom, so even though you wanna do this for the benefits to the infant, mom gets some benefits too. She experiences a reduction in the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, like bloating and diarrhea and abdominal discomfort. It can reduce the symptoms of ulcerative colitis, like diarrhea and abdominal pain. It reduces fatty liver. That's a whole nother conversation. It's very interesting, by the way, but this can be one of the things you can do to reduce the damage to your liver through fatty liver. And even mood can improve. Less anxiety, less likelihood of depression. So even mom benefits by restoring Bifidobacterium infantis, most important for infants. So we can put microbes to work, and we can amp up, we can jack up the benefits by this unique process of fermentation.

13. 23:29 – 25:38

    Microbiome strategy as a “menu”: choose microbes for desired effects

    1. WDDr. William Davis23:29

       It's very easy, by the way. So it's in my Super Gut book how to do this. It's just a few steps. But don't get overwhelmed by this. If you say, "Oh, I can't believe there's too many microbes to replace," don't, don't get, uh, uh, scared by this. Think of it like going to a restaurant. When you walk into a restaurant and the waitress gives you a menu, do you freak out and say, "There's no way I can order all these appetizers and main dishes and desserts"? No, of course not, right? You pick and choose the dishes you like. You can approach the microbiome in the same way. Pick and choose the microbe you want for the effect you want. I've only told you about two, but if you want to have smoother skin, accelerated healing, like other people better, you should ferment Lactobacillus reuteri. If you are a mom contemplating pregnancy, a woman contemplating pregnancy, or you're in the midst of pregnancy, or you have a newborn or a young child, think about replacing Bifidobacteria infantis for all those incredible effects that include better sleep, fewer bowel movements, less potential for asthma, irritable bowel syndrome, and other health conditions, and a higher IQ. What if you want to increase your creativity and your mental clarity? Well, maybe you should make yogurt out of Bi- uh, Lactobacillus brevis because that microbe produces something called phenylethylamine, and that is a nootropic, something that makes you smarter, a little faster on your feet, a little more creative, better able to synthesize data, and it makes you a little bit happier. What if you want to reduce arthritis pain in your knee or hips? Cultivate Bacillus coagulans. Do you see where I'm going with this? Treat it like a menu. Choose the microbe you want for the benefit you want. Okay. That's in a nutshell what my Super Gut book is about and lots of other things, but I hope I, I enticed your appetite. I, I, I started you thinking about just how powerful, fascinating, fun, and effective it is to address your microbiome.

14. 25:38 – 59:13

    Q&A: sweeteners, post-antibiotic recovery, fermented foods, testing, and SIBO tools

    1. NGNadia Gil25:38

       Thank you so much, Dr. Davis. That was fantastic. We have so many questions in the chat. So I'll start, you know, asking you the questions, and if we run out of time, I will contact you and send you the questions, and we'll contact back the people who-

    2. WDDr. William Davis25:56

       Okay, Nadia

    3. NGNadia Gil25:57

       ... sent the questions. So let's do this. A question from Miriam Leguerri. Any sweetener that has proven to not negatively influence the micro- microbiome? I also want to know that.

    4. WDDr. William Davis26:13

       So we avoid the synthetic sweeteners, sucralose, saccharin, and aspartame because we know with pretty good evidence that they introduce quite dramatic disruptive effects on the microbiome. But so far, stevia in its various forms, monk fruit, allulose, and probably erythritol really don't seem to have much effect. You know, something like stevia, you lose... you use in such tiny quantities that it's unlikely to have an effect, and the evidence suggests it really doesn't have much effect. And allulose, in particular, is not just a sweetener that's non-caloric. It also has some modest prebiotic fiber q- uh, qualities. That is, it feeds bacteria. So it may actually be positive for your microbiome. So we use stevia, allulose, uh, monk fruit, and erythritol.

    5. NGNadia Gil27:01

       Excellent. Thank you. Um, next question from Ian Mulholland. Uh, he used vancomycin, um, for an infection, uh, but now the gut is seriously out of whack. Any recommendations for a protocol to restore gut balance post vancomycin?

    6. WDDr. William Davis27:22

       So Ian, there's not one answer, unfortunately, but let me make this point. One of the most th- there... What I do is I, I ask people to think about their microbiome, their intestinal microbiome, like a backyard garden. So let's, let's pretend it's May. Around here, more like June. I'm in Wisconsin [laughs] where it's below zero right now. But think about a, a s- a springtime garden. How do you do that? Well, maybe you lay out a 10-by-10 plot, right? Then you clear the, the soil. You pick out the rocks and the twigs and the weeds. Then you plant seeds. And then through the growing season, you water and fertilize your garden, right? And then at the end of the growing season, you'll have a, a bounty of zucchini and tomatoes and, and, and, um, a squash, right? Same kind of principle applies to the microbiome. How do we clear the soil? Well, let's remove things that disrupt the soil, those synthetic sweeteners, uh, food additives like emulsifying agents in your salad dressing and ice cream. We filter our water to remove the chlorine and fluoride. We try to get off all those drugs. And by the way, you might have to find doctors who will allow you to do that. Doctors are really good at putting people on medication. They suck at taking you off medications, right [laughs] ? So you gotta find one who's willing to work with you and be your advocate, okay? So try to get off those medications. Minimize antibiotics. You know, there's a time and place. Maybe the vancomycin was really necessary for a terrible in- infection, so there's a time and place where you have to do those things. If you had pneumococcal pneumonia, and you have a fever of 104, and you can't breathe, you need an antibiotic. But you don't need an antibiotic, you have a scratchy throat, a viral upper respiratory, and you take an antibiotic just in case it becomes bacterial. That's not a good reason. The vast majority of prescribed antibiotics are prescribed inappropriately. That's important to know. We try to choose organic foods because they're less likely to have herbicide and pesticide residues. We never eat genetically modified foods because they have glyphosate and BT toxin, both of which have microbiome implications. So there's a list of things. That sounds like a lot. It's really not that tough. It's a return to whole foods, right? Not packaged, processed foods. It's trying to get off prescription medications, right? It's drinking real water, not stuff processed and chlorinated. So it's a return to that, those, that kind of lifestyle. Then we seed our microbiomes. The most important thing you can do to seed your microbiome... People think it's a probiotic. It's not. It may be in future, but the current crop of commercial probiotics are just haphazard collections of microbes. They don't think about what we just talked about, choosing the microbes that have these big, outsized effects at higher numbers too, right? They just throw a bunch together and sell it as a commercial probiotic. So the best thing you can do to re- to reseed your intestinal microbiome is to re-adopt fermented foods. In fact, a lot of this information comes from where Google is. It comes from the Sonnenburgs, Erica and Justin at Stanford. And they published a very important study, very insightful, just a few months ago, that showed that among the most important things you can do is eat a fermented food several times a day. These are foods like kimchi and kombucha and fermented sauerkraut, veggies you ferment on your, uh, kitchen counter, uh, fermented meats. You know, when refrigeration was invented for home use in 1927 by Frigidaire, and they learned how to use Freon as a refrigerant, Americans forgot that ferment... They started to think of fermented foods as rotten food. Now Europeans, by the way, and Asians are much better at maintaining an intake of fermented foods. But Americans, North Americans, have become very bad at this. Most people hardly ever, if ever, consume a fermented food. I'm not talking about booze. That's, that's a different kind of fermentation. This is lactic acid fermentation. So bring back. Now thankfully, it's getting easier and easier to buy these things. It's very easy to make. Uh, y- you can find out anywhere online. There's, there's hundreds of websites that tell you how to ferment foods, including in my Super Gut book. It should cost you almost nothing. You don't have to buy special equipment. You do have to filter your water, right? Remove chlorine and fluoride. You can't use iodized salt. The iodine's antibacterial. Those, those two caveats. But then you put it on your counter and leave it there for days to weeks, and you restore microbes that way. And by the way, if you do buy commercial fermented foods, you wanna make sure it says fermented or live cultures or some other indication that it has been fermented. Now, what I like to do, if I buy, say, some fermented pickles or fermented sauerkraut or some kimchi, I'll leave it on my kitchen counter for several days to several weeks to allow fermentation. Because when you buy something commercially, you know, to illustrate, let's say, let's pretend Nadia has a shoe factory, okay? And it takes her two weeks to make a pair of shoes, and her neighbor can make a pair of shoes in 30 minutes. Who's gonna make more money? Well, sadly, her neighbor will, right? 'Cause it's faster. Same thing in fermentation of foods. The manufacturer will try to ferment as briefly as possible, like that yogurt manufacturer, four hours, nothing, right? So the same kind of principle applies here. They're going to cut back on fermentation time. So you can remedy that. You could call up the company and say, "Hey, I want you to ferment longer." They're not gonna do it. So [laughs] you can ferment longer on your kitchen counter for... And you'll, at first you're gonna say, "Oh my God, it's gonna go bad. It's gonna go rotten." No. Keep the lid on and you'll see that it will have higher count. If you were to perform an analysis, you would see much higher microbial counts. So the most important thing you can do is include fermented foods in every meal. And, and a probiotic can be somewhat helpful. Uh, but probiotics will become better and more effective as they incorporate several important principles, such as including keystone species, that is, species important for other species, like plankton in the ocean. Without plankton, there ain't no whales or jellyfish. You need plankton. Same principle in your intestinal microbiome. You need keystone species. Rotorai and infantis are two keystone species. And then lastly, you want to water and fertilize your garden. That takes the form of these fibers, prebiotic fibers, polysaccharides. These are things that microbes need. If you don't feed them, bad things happen. By the way, that's one of the things happening, sadly, in all these people on the ketogenic diet who don't be- remain mindful of their prebiotic fiber intake. There's an odd phenomenon that occurs when you do that. And so if you're eating lots of meats, fatty meats, green vegetables, but you're avoiding starchy things 'cause you're low carb on a ketogenic diet, and you're not making it a point to get onions and garlic and shallots and asparagus and legumes, those are the sources of those prebiotic fibers. If you neglect that, something weird happens. There's a very beneficial species called Akkermansia muciniphila. When you deprive your microbiome of those fibers, lots of species die off or reduce the numbers. Akkermansia, that has many beneficial effects, proliferates out of control. It comes to occupy 8%, 12%, 18%, as much as 24% of all microbes in the human intestinal tract. But so its real name, its full name, Akkermansia muciniphila, mucus lover. It starts to eat your intestinal mucus.

    7. SPSpeaker35:07

       Got it.

    8. WDDr. William Davis35:07

       Causes colitis, allows breakdown products of bacteria to enter the bloodstream. That's called endotoxemia. Very important. Endotoxemia. 'Cause when microbial breakdown products enter the bloodstream, it raises blood sugar, makes you gain weight, it leads to neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's disease, depression, autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, skin diseases like rosacea. So don't make the mistake, whether we're talking about a carnivorous diet, a ketogenic diet, low carb, whatever you call it, don't make the mistake of depriving your microbe, your friends, of the things they want to eat. So legumes, inulin fructooligosaccharide powder for convenience, you put it in your coffee. The galactooligosaccharides in white beans, black beans, kidney beans, et cetera. Don't neglect those. Those are extremely important. So, so in answer to Ian's question [laughs] , it's not just one thing, it's many things, right? 'Cause we have to undo the damage we've done through a lifetime, right, of not doing these things.

    9. NGNadia Gil36:12

       Th- thank you, doctor. Uh, wow. Yeah, I'm going to the, to the store right after we speak [laughs] to-

    10. WDDr. William Davis36:18

        [laughs]

    11. NGNadia Gil36:18

        ... to get some legumes. Uh, okay, another question, we have so many, uh, from Val Ditsikiu. Um, do bacteria in yogurt and other fermented foods survive stomach acid? How important it is to get many billions of bacteria in a serving of food versus one to 10 in the s- from the supplements?

    12. WDDr. William Davis36:44

        So the vast majority of species chosen, uh, to, to be taken as a probiotic or as a yogurt have been tested for exactly that, the, the question Val was asking. For survival through stomach acid, stomach's extremely acidic, and survival in bile. That's another thing, bile acids. And so Lactobacillus reuteri is in- is very... it, it survives to a great degree in stomach acid, in bile. Likewise Bifidobacterium infantis. In other words, you can recover substantial numbers in the s- in the stool. You don't reten- some take up residence, some just pass through. So yes, they do survive. And by the way, be careful. I, I regret one thing here. Calling the Lactobacillus reuteri or the infantis yogurt, yogurt, it's not yogurt. If the FDA is listening, they would say, "Hey, don't call it yogurt because by our definition, by the FDA's definition, yogurt is something made fermenting dairy with Lactobacillus bulgaricus or Streptococcus thermophilus." The two microbes traditionally used to make yogurt. Well, those are kind of ho-hum species. They don't do a whole lot. And of course, they're present in trivial numbers in commercial yogurt. So don't, don't be confused by my mistake of calling what we do yogurt. I wa- I wasn't quite sure what to call it. We could call it a fermented dairy product or fermented food, but that's not very, uh, uh, interesting. So, uh, we really shouldn't call it yogurt. But I'm not selling you yogurt, or I'm not selling it to you, so I don't have to adhere to FDA regulations. But you should know that when you buy yogurt, that's completely different than what you and I are talking about when we make yogurt.

    13. NGNadia Gil38:25

        Are, are there any regular medicines available in pharmacies to keep the intestinal flora, this is from Karim Buramov, Bumarov, uh, sufficient to keep our biome healthy?

    14. WDDr. William Davis38:41

        No. Uh, there are plenty of medications that disrupt the microbiome, but there are no medications that restore the microbiome. Well, this... see, uh, people sometimes take that as bad news. I take it as great news because I wanna be freed of the tyranny of big pharma. I wanna be... I wanna live naturally. I wanna restore things. You know what? H- here's a sad and rather cynical fact. The doctor should be an expert in nutrition, right? The doctor should be an expert in nutrients. The doctor should be an expert in the microbiome and help you achieve magnificent health without pharmaceuticals and procedures. Is that what healthcare is? No. [laughs] Healthcare is about the practice of dispensing pharmaceuticals and procedures for the benefit of healthcare insiders. I know that's excessively cynical, but it is largely true, I believe. So I f- I think it's great news that you and I are obtaining the insights, the, the, the strategies for us to take control of our own health, including our own microbiomes. So you don't need your doctor's permission to make [laughs] Lactobacillus reuteri yogurt, right? You don't need your doctor's permission to avoid emulsifying agents in your salad dressing or ice cream. You don't need [laughs] your doctor's permission to, uh, choose organic foods, right? These are things you do on your own. And don't be surprised if you get a lot of skepticism from your doctor, who will say things like, "Probiotics have been shown to be ineffective or destructive." That is a glaring m- I hear this a lot, by the way, from my colleagues. That is a glaring misinterpretation of one study that made headlines.

    15. NGNadia Gil40:31

        Mm.

    16. WDDr. William Davis40:31

        This is not true. It is absolutely not... You can see though, if you, if you did like they did in that study, just pick any old anonymous probiotic and take it, is it gonna... I- imagine I said to Nadia, "Nadia, take this drug." Nadia says, "What, what kind of drug?" "I'm not gonna tell you." [laughs] Nadia's gonna say, "Get lost, buster. I'm not gonna take it." Why would you do that with probiotics? "Here, take this probiotic." "Well, what's in it?" "Oh, we don't know. We just put it together." It's a slapdash [laughs] haphazard collection of microbes. That is not how you create a, a probiotic, but that's what most current products are. So you and I-

    17. NGNadia Gil41:06

        Mm

    18. WDDr. William Davis41:06

        ... gonna be smarter. If we do buy a commercial probiotic, we're gonna choose ones that have specific properties, like they contain those keystone species. Even better, they c- it's a collection of microbes that have been shown to have collaborative effects. Cl- microbes just like people, they don't, we don't live by ourselves, right? We, we live in families, clans, communities, neighborhoods. Bacteria do the same exact thing, and microbe A might produce something necessary for microbe B. Microbe B produces something essential for microbe C. Microbe C produces something microbe A likes, right? [laughs] So those microbes, those guilds or consortia, have not yet been fully mapped out. It's a work in progress.

    19. NGNadia Gil41:52

        Mm.

    20. WDDr. William Davis41:53

        Uh, but a, a modern probiotic should have included some of those features. Because when you do that, when you con- con- uh, uh, take it as a community of microbes, it has much bigger effects on the host. That is us.

    21. NGNadia Gil42:09

        Mm. [clears throat] No, this is great. Uh, and this takes us to our next question from David Gasior. Um, how do we get L. reuteri?

    22. WDDr. William Davis42:20

        Oh, how do we get lactobacillus reuteri? I'm gonna tell you a little secret. [laughs] So I initially started doing this by getting the, a commercial strain. It comes from Sweden. It comes from a company called BioGaia, B-I-O-G-A-I-A, and I have no relationship with this company nor the product, okay? And you buy it as a product called Gastrus, G-A-S-T-R-U-S. That commercial product has two strains of reuteri in it.

    23. NGNadia Gil42:45

        Mm.

    24. WDDr. William Davis42:45

        And this was a strain looked at through very elegant studies that came out of MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from 2013 to 2017, and that was the group that initially stumbled, this cancer group stumbled on these very incredible, interesting effects, such as thicker skin, dermal collagen, uh, restoration of muscle in older mice, uh, reduction of appetite, uh, increased oxytocin. A lot of that got its start with those mouse studies at MIT. Well, th- those studies used that Gastrus product. Now, the Gastrus product was created for babies.

    25. NGNadia Gil43:22

        Mm.

    26. WDDr. William Davis43:22

        So the dose is very low. So I got ahold of these, uh, this commercial product, and that's what motivated me to make, make the yogurt, prolonged fermentation, because we wanted much bigger numbers. And that's how we get the several hundred billion. And when people... thousands of people are eating this and experience all those effects that we talked about. Now, I have eight strains I've gotten from commercial manufacturers. So these aren't all available retail yet, yet, and I've experienced all these effects. This is anecdote, but I've experienced all these effects. One of the things I experienced is being converted from a terrible insomniac [laughs] to deep sleep-

    27. NGNadia Gil44:02

        Wow

    28. WDDr. William Davis44:02

        ... nine hours straight through.

    29. NGNadia Gil44:04

        Wow.

    30. WDDr. William Davis44:04

        I've experienced this with all strains. So my suspicion, my suspicion is that it's not unique to that product. It may be shared by many. Now we have a, a mouse, uh, trial set up and a human, several human trials set up to prove this. Is there a strain of reuteri that's better than another, or are they the same? And what's the quantity you require? Do we really need 260 billion, or does it, can we just be happy with 100 billion or 50 billion? We don't know. So we're gonna look at all that in our own animal and human work, so stay tuned to that conversation and, uh, we'll be reporting that over the next year or two or so. In the meantime, you would not go wrong by getting that Gastrus product, but you'll have to do the amplification, the yogurt step. There are some other strains I'm not too fond of. There's a strain called 30242, which I think has the oxytocin effect, but it doesn't produce that bacteriocin. Remember that issue?

Episode duration: 59:13