Today I have the pleasure of chatting with Dr. Vincent Pedre, who is not just an internist but also a certified functional medicine practitioner. What I find truly captivating about him is that he is also an author. He wrote an amazing book called “Happy Gut,” which kicks off with a thought-provoking quiz. He delves into all the interconnected aspects related to gut health, including mental wellbeing, physical health, energy levels, weight management, inflammation, and even sleep quality.

His book offers an abundance of delicious recipes and food suggestions. So, whether you have a healthy gut, moderate issues, or even more severe conditions like IBS, you’ll find practical guidance within its pages.

What stands out to me is that it brings us closer to our bodies, helping us understand how we truly feel. The detailed questionnaire aids in self-reflection, followed by actionable steps to improve our well-being.

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Resources Mentioned:

• Happy Gut 
• The GutSMART Protocol 
• @drpedre
• www.GabrielleReece.com
• @gabbyreece

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Show Sponsors:

• Vionic Shoes | Vionicshoes.com and use code GABBY at checkout for 15% off your entire order
• Maui Nui | mauinuivenison.com/GABBY to get 20% off your first order
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TimeStamps

• [00:02:15] Gut Health
• [00:13:14] Lack of Clarity
• [00:18:30] Managing Food for 14 Days
• [00:23:27] Vertical Breathing
• [00:39:25] Vagus Nerve
• [00:39:25] Gut is a Garden
• [00:46:44] COVID
• [00:53:43] Different Kinds of Diets
• [01:00:01] Lymphatic Tissue
• [01:08:29] Microbiome Shifts
• [01:13:15] Eczema

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Show Transcript:

[00:01:10] Gabby Reece: So, your first book, The Happy Gut and now you have a follow-up book called The Gut Smart Protocol. And the first thing that jumped out to me about this book was the fact that you break it down and we’re going to get into all the important things about the gut.

But also, you’ve created a real workbook for people and a manual to hold their hands. So, there’s a quiz, there’s tons and tons of recipes. And so, I really think you did such a beautiful job of up to explaining, Hey, you don’t even need to have symptoms to have gut issues. And, but if you do have some of these seven, I think there’s sort of seven kind of categories of symptoms, then okay.

Maybe this is what’s happening and here’s the, how we can how we can take care of it because one thing talking on the show all the time, the thing that comes up over and over again is how really the gut is connected, whether you want to talk about your digestion, your skin, your mood, it’s just connected to everything.

[00:02:17] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Absolutely. Yeah. And that’s what really inspired me to get into the realm of gut health because of having myself. I suffered from a whole bunch of gut health issues growing up, so I did have gut symptoms. But then seeing and working with patients over the last decade with gut health issues and how remarkably how they get better when you start with the gut.

Because I say it’s like building a house. You wouldn’t build a house without a foundation. right? Because the house could easily sink, it could crumble. So, you always build a foundation first and then you put the house on top of that foundation. If you’re thinking about the house of your health, the foundation for it is your gut and your gut health.

Everything to me goes downstream from there. I was thinking those chain of dominoes. and you just tip the first one over to me, that first domino is your gut. And when your gut goes, then the downstream effects are your skin, your brain, your metabolism, your hormones, your immune system.

Your lungs, your joints, everything else is downstream from the gut. Yeah. And

[00:03:41] Gabby Reece: I really appreciate it. I always find sometimes that the most passionate healers are people who’ve had their own journey of sorts in this and that you didn’t even figure out. And actually, I think a lot of people feel like, Oh, I’m just, that’s just how it is.

That’s how I feel that you personally had things that you were dealing with and you didn’t really navigate until you were in your

[00:04:00] Dr. Vincent Pedre: thirties. Yeah. Yeah. And I think part of that, it was. One, having lived with it for so many years, where it just becomes the background noise. So, you stop hearing it and you just think this is the way my body behaves.

Sometimes I go out, eat, and I’m rushing home and I’m in the bathroom and don’t know why. I realized, once I discovered functional medicine, that there were many reasons why. It’s just that I wasn’t taught those reasons. in traditional medical school. You get you start thinking that you just treat these symptoms like you have IBS.

So, we give you, or you have acid reflux. So, we’ll give you an antacid. We’ll give you an acid blocker or you’ve got IBS. So, we’ll give you an antispasmodic. We’ll give you something to help with the pain in your gut. But we’re not really looking at the true underlying cause of why this is going on. And I think I was lucky that I was in the health field and always in search of and in the quest, really in the quest for the ultimate truth.

Not believing that I had been given the complete picture through my traditional medical school training. I would read a lot of books. I was always looking at different viewpoints and alternative ways of thinking about health, which now have become mainstream. But back then, when I was looking at these things back in the 90s and the early 2000s, this was not mainstream medicine at all.

 This was on the fringes, but calling us to awaken to something different that things weren’t quite right and it was through functional medicine that I took a second look at myself because by then I, in my thirties, I had thought this is I’ve just settled into the way that my body operates and not realizing gluten is an issue, or dairy is an issue, or, that these things are affecting my immunity, they’re affecting my skin health, my propensity to get sick, my, my sinuses, my stools.

And I wasn’t connecting the dots were there and here I am a fully trained doctor, but I was not connecting the dots because the dots that I had to connect were going against what the mainstream believed was a normal part of life. Everybody goes and has pizza from time to time. That’s considered a socially acceptable.

Food that is one of the most common foods that are eaten throughout the United States and maybe around the world. And I didn’t realize that, okay every time you have pizza, you’re running to the bathroom an hour later and you have loose stools or diarrhea, but I wasn’t making, I was just thinking this is just the way my system operates.

This is just it. Maybe it’s the cheese and all that. I wasn’t making the connection. And I think this happens with a lot of people. They’re experiencing symptoms in their bodies and they’re eating things that are causing those symptoms, but they’re not connecting the two. They’re not really connecting the two because your part of a society where having these foods has been normalized and unbeknownst to us. Right underneath our noses, the food industry was changing the character of these foods over time, so wheat was being hybridized, the gluten content in wheat was increasing in the middle of the 1900s, as a way to make wheat more drought resistant.

So, in a way, it came from a desire to make food accessible and available to all of humanity. So, it had an egalitarian, impetus to, to make wheat able to withstand different types of environmental conditions. The problem is as they did that and they hybridized the wheat, it increased the amount of gluten content by 50 percent and we’re just not designed to handle that amount of gluten.

[00:08:34] Gabby Reece: Yeah. I always love the expression just cause it’s normal doesn’t make it right. And I think we have a lot of that in our world. And even, alcohol has, I feel like a place in the world like that where there’s these things that are so highly normalized, but they don’t actually really support us.

 And interestingly for me with technology, everyone’s measuring, and we have conversations in our house about also tuning in to how you’re feeling versus needing something to tell you. And I think that point that you made of people just stepping back and going. I feel bloated.

I’m gassy. I, I have acid reflux. Like just tuning into how does it impact my sleep? And you talk also about and into intuitive eating and intuition eating and things like that in the book. And for me that was like a reminder to people of in certain ways, we still are always going to be our own best doctor.

And it’s for us to people are busy. They’re stressed out. They almost don’t even look up to this. So, I really appreciated that, that approach. So maybe we can just start and identify, you mentioned it, but it’s, seven related categories, symptoms and again, people can have gut issues and not have symptoms, but it’s skin your airway, the brain cognitive function, and maybe Alzheimer’s and dementia later joints, which that one really interests me because.

Okay. being active. I feel it right away in my joints first. That’s where I feel it when I eat weird food, your metabolism. So, for people who talk, think about weight loss or weight management. That’s my new favorite word, weight management. Or what’s the

[00:10:10] Dr. Vincent Pedre: yeah. And it sounds very technical. Yes.

 [00:10:13] Gabby Reece: And body composition. That’s the other one. If you’re managing body composition, I’m like, you mean losing weight and then your immune system. And maybe, you, for people that seem to this, they go yeah, but this is overwhelming. So, let’s say someone knows they have a gut issue.

Okay. We’ll put that aside. Let’s say somebody goes, something isn’t right, but I don’t have a very specific issue. What’s the starting point for somebody to really? What test how do they start because I think that’s what keeps a lot of people away, they don’t really have a good sort of confident starting point.

 [00:10:49] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yeah, I think lack of clarity is always a place that creates indecision right and then there’s you know, a lot of it also has to do with commitment and the desire to heal and the desire to do the work that it takes to heal. I say one place, I put so much work into this. I’ll show it for a moment.

The, my book, the gut smart protocol. I started with a quiz because after I wrote my first book, I realized that you can’t always one size fits all people with gut issues or gut related health issues. And that’s what a lot of the health books out there do. They give you a one size fits everybody. plan. The problem is that’s not what works when it comes to gut health and people with gut related health issues.

It’s not what I see work. A person who has severe gut dysbiosis, imbalances, they’re going to have a lot of difficulty eating certain foods that maybe someone with moderate or mild gut issues will be okay with. So, when I decided to do my second book, putting kind of all my experience working one on one with people and just seeing how I held their hand through the process and how I could individualize for them.

And I thought let me do this in a book that can be used by anybody. anywhere based on a quiz. So, starting with a quiz, it’s not a blood test. You don’t have to collect your poop. I know some people are sketchy about collecting their own poop and look, I understand. There’s nothing

[00:12:32] Gabby Reece: like shipping your poop in the mail. You know what I mean?

[00:12:37] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Or putting that container on the toilet that catches the poop. Yes. As you’re it’s it almost reminds me of when you were a kid and you were being potty trained. And you have the special toilet for that. So, I start people with a quiz. The quiz lets you know where you are qualitatively mild, moderate, or severe, but also gives you a score because there’s a range in each of them.

And so, you get a number score anywhere between one and four 50. And that score tells you what category you fall into mild, moderate, or severe. So, Dr. Pedre, you

[00:13:14] Gabby Reece: I do love the scoring system because it’s also doesn’t feel threatening like somehow it just there’s a you make it friendly enough or even if it’s okay, moderate or severe that it’s just in from the way you did the quiz, it makes it feel it just makes it feel inviting that people would continue to say, okay, I’m going to not be freaked out by this.

 [00:13:38] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yeah, it’s basically just to figure out what is your starting point, and you’re not competing against anyone, you’re just getting a measure of where you’re at. And using that as a marker for your progress as you go.

[00:13:55] Gabby Reece: So Dr. Pedre, because people, if they can’t do blood work and they don’t have to send in, fecal matter, tests and things like that, you’ve set it up so that they take a quiz, they get a score so they know, hey, It, it, you’re it’s okay it’s moderate, hey, this is a little more severe.

And then from there, is that when they do the 28 day cleanse? Or how does it work exactly?

[00:14:21] Dr. Vincent Pedre: This one I truncated into 14 days to make it even less overwhelming and accessible to people. And so, once you get your score, I have a whole list of almost anything you could imagine eating every food divided into moderate, mild, and severe.

And depending on your category, you know exactly what you can or cannot eat. For example, like if you’re going out to a restaurant and you’re making sure that what they have fits in your category. And then we have 65 recipes that people get that are divided also into mild, moderate or severe. The cool thing is that as you progress in categories, severe is going to be the most restricted in terms of foods that they can eat.

And yet there are still a lot of foods. that people can have in the severe category. Once you get to moderate, you can eat everything in the moderate and the severe, and when you get to mild, you can eat across. And mild still has certain very minute, maybe some restrictions here and there just to help people really get back to health.

So, they do this for 14 days, and then at the end of the 14 days, the idea is Take the quiz again, find out where you’re at, get an idea of how your progress has been. One thing that I’ve noted when looking at for example, different dietary intervention studies that have been done there was a study that was done, In last year in 2022, and it was published in the journal nature and they were looking at the effects of diet on stress and could stress lower diet, looking at the effects through the gut and what they found was that there was a gut effect that helped lower perceived stress in individuals by increasing fiber and fermented foods, which are in my program.

But not for everyone. And I’ll get to that. But the, I think the really interesting thing here was that the people, they also documented people’s compliance to the program. So, everybody who was doing the intervention diet gave themselves a score like, Oh, I was on the diet 80 percent of the time or 20 percent of the time.

They found that the people who had the highest level of compliance.

So I think that’s important to note because you might do the 14 day program and at the end of it, maybe your score didn’t move as much as you were hoping, but maybe when you reflect back and think was I really compliant? No, I would cheat here and there, and I wanted a glass of wine.

My friends were having some wine and so you weren’t 100 percent compliant. Okay. with the program because I know it works when you follow the program, but it’s going to work differently for different people depending on your level of compliance and dedication to the program. And that’s a good like self-reflection point.

There are definitely times when I’ve done things where I’ve been maybe 50 percent in and you see the results you get and you realize, Oh, okay. If I really want this, then I need to like up level my compliance. So, I’m not pointing it out to be like pointing a finger at those people out there because I’m certainly one that battles with my own sometimes bad habits, things that I’ve got to break and it’s not always easy.

But I think having that feedback, that’s so easy to take, just a couple of minutes you take the quiz, then it gives you, it also gives you feedback on progress that a lot of times people don’t see for themselves. because either they forget that they were having a symptom. The, you just can’t see the progress when you’re inside the picture yourself.

Yeah. A lot of times, a lot of times people don’t see their own improvements, but they have other people say Oh, you look different.

[00:18:30] Gabby Reece: And I think for me, 14 days, it’s Hey, listen, maybe don’t pick right before the holidays to do this, that, pick a time that, you can dedicate time to managing food for 14 days.

[00:18:40] Dr. Vincent Pedre: And. Especially if it’s the first time, but yeah.

[00:18:44] Gabby Reece: Yeah and I would actually, I, in something like that, I would like, right now I’m doing something with one of my daughters, I have three daughters she’s a young adult, and we’re eating a certain way together. And it’s just making it so much easier.

So, I, I really feel like too, if you’re living in a house. It would be interesting if you could recruit another person, so you have an ally for adherence. I think it just makes it a lot easier. And the book, I really want, I want to reemphasize how much work you put into it. Like when you talk about the food, there is a lot of information and a lot of breakdown about food and the food categories.

Now what are the things that can really hammer the gut? Let’s start with stress because there might be people who. They’re exercising, they’re eating well enough to be gut supportive, but they’re stressed out of their mind and they’re not sleeping. Are you trashing your gut the same as if you’re, on cycles of antibiotics and, drinking a bunch of alcohol, does the body differentiate?

[00:19:48] Dr. Vincent Pedre: You know what I say is that and this. From being in New York City and treating, some very high, strong type A personalities over the years. If you’ve visited, you’re smiling, so you’ve probably been to New York City, so you know what I’m talking about. But you can find them everywhere in the world.

And what I’ve learned is that you cannot out diet and you can’t out supplement a stressed out lifestyle. Stress is the elephant in the room that if you try to ignore, it’s going to squash you and it’s going to create havoc. In your gut health, not just your gut health, but your whole system, it’s going to create, again, it’s that domino effect and you cannot, you can’t tease it out.

You can’t be this person who is perfectly eating, getting the fermented foods, taking all the right supplements, drinking the, the pH nine water. But you are stressed. I want to say a bad word, stress the F out and you’re wondering why you’re not getting better because you’re doing everything right, but you’re not seeing the elephant in the room.

You’re not dealing with your stress. You’re not creating safety for your body, creating that, that vagal tone that is so necessary for the body to say, okay, I can heal. It’s safe for me to heal now.

[00:21:18] Gabby Reece: It’d be fascinating to hear that conversation with those patients. They’re in charge, they’re probably high achieving.

Is it like, hey, go to therapy, meditate, take a yoga class? None of this is going to improve until you get your cortisol down and manage yourself. How do you, as a professional doctor who has to walk an interesting line that, that’s. That must be a fun conversation.

[00:21:47] Dr. Vincent Pedre: I love having these conversations with people.

And, if I’m one on one with someone, I’m always I call it pressure testing. Yeah. I might say something and see how they react. I’m looking at their body language. I’m looking at their facial expression. And I’ll go as far as someone will let me go. And depending on what their likes are, because I think you first going back to that intuition, like you need to know who you are and what is the avenue that can access that part of you.

So, I’ve had over the years, many adrenaline junkies who love doing their high intensity workouts, but you tell them yoga and they’re like, like yoga, I’m not going to go in a room and stretch for an hour and breathe. But then for that person, I can say Do you like getting out in nature?

Because studies have shown that spending 30 minutes three times a week in nature lowers cortisol levels just by doing that. So, can we get you out to the park? Can we get you out of the house, out of the apartment, out of the office and go walk through the park, spend some time in the park on your way home, get some nature, the nature prescription in there.

Or can I get you to do some breath work? And I teach them how to do deep diaphragmatic breathing. And most of the time, these people have unregulated nervous systems their sympathetic are firing, they’re always go. You ask them to breathe and take a deep breath, and the first thing they do is this.

[00:23:27] Gabby Reece: Yeah. I love the vertical breathing.

[00:23:30] Dr. Vincent Pedre: So, they’re breathing with their accessory muscles and that’s not the style of breathing that allows that internal activation of the vagus nerve, which I talk a lot about in my book. Yeah.

[00:23:41] Gabby Reece: Chapter, what is it? Chapter 10 is dedicated to the vagus nerve. Now let’s slide over there for a second.

[00:23:48] Gabby Reece: You said that a lot of times, even if someone has, and I found this fascinating if they’ve hit their head or damaged. their vagus nerve in any way that this can really damage the gut.

[00:24:03] Dr. Vincent Pedre: It does. So, they’ve looked at traumatic brain injury patients and within say traumatic brain injury you’ve been knocked unconscious, you’re taken to the ER, the hospital within 30 minutes of a traumatic brain injury, you’ve getting vagal nerve dysfunction the signaling from the brain down to the gut gets disrupted.

 And the way I think of that, I guess now I should probably say it’s like an, a fiber optic cable that’s getting disrupted. I used to say, because I think of it more like dial tone, like anybody who’s old enough that had the old phones that you pick up and had a dial tone. It’s what your body’s doing.

It’s sending a tone down and that signal is controlling things like gut permeability. It’s controlling the secretion. of enzymes that we need for digestion. It’s also controlling gut motility as well. So, within 30 minutes of a traumatic brain injury, which I had when I was 19, I was in a bicycle accident, knocked unconscious, thankfully wearing a helmet that saved my life.

Woke up in the E. R. Nobody knew back then. This is back in the I’m going to say the early nineties. There was no concept of functional medicine of the effects of leaky gut and all that, unless you were in the really alternative places then that knew about this. So, within 30 minutes, your gut permeability is increasing and what that basically is doing it’s opening the gates of the border control and it’s allowing all of these inflammatory substances to come into your body.

So now you just had a traumatic brain injury. And your gut permeability is increased. Inflammatory substances. Your brain is probably already rattled from the injury. Now you have all this inflammation coming in, and we know that when the gut barrier becomes leaky, then something very special that protects the brain, it’s called the blood brain barrier, That also becomes leaky, so now the brain is not protected from these inflammatory substances and your brain becomes inflamed.

And that can be a big problem. Thankfully, for me, when I had my TBI, I woke up within 30 minutes. I was awake in the ER. But I had headaches for at least four to six weeks after that injury. And what do you do for a headache? Oh, yeah.

[00:26:38] Gabby Reece: Oh, yeah.

[00:26:39] Dr. Vincent Pedre: You take you take over the counter Advil, ibuprofen, Tylenol.

And what that does is it also increases gut permeability. again, speaking of a normalized behavior that is okay because the FDA has approved these medications to be used over the counter. They have very fine print that warns you about the use of these medications, but like for example, my, my sister had joint pains and she was taking, she didn’t tell me she was taking.

Some non-steroidal anti-inflammatory, she was taking it for a long period of time that had she asked me, but she never asked me, I’ve been like you have to be careful because that thing can eat a hole in your stomach. She ended up with an ulcer and she had to go off of those medications instead, fish oils.

It’s so simple. High dose fish oil protected for the brain. It’s great for the gut. It’s anti-inflammatory. It resolves inflammation and it doesn’t cause leaky gut.

[00:27:45] Gabby Reece: People think nothing of popping an Advil or an aspirin and they don’t realize how fine the gut lining is and how it can perforate that so easily.

So, I really appreciate that. Going back to the vagus nerve, if you, let’s say somebody has heard it, is it is it a wait and see a time thing where it has to heal and then you have to do everything you can with your food and lifestyle to support making sure the guts regenerates or how what does that look like?

[00:28:17] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yeah, I wanted to mention something that, traumatic brain injury they’re horrible. Thankfully, they’re not as common as. Other causes of vagal nerve dysfunction, probably the biggest cause of it is chronic unrelenting stress. When you have chronic unrelenting stress, that’s going to have a deactivating effect on that vagus nerve.

And how do you know you’re a person who, when you get stressed out you get sick to your stomach or you’re stressed, and you start having acid reflux. That’s a sign that your vagus nerve is not firing properly. Or you’re the type who gets stressed, you’re going through a stressful event, maybe you lost a family member maybe you’re going through a divorce, maybe you’re going through a breakup and you’re sick to your stomach and when you eat, the food feels like it sits like a brick in your stomach.

 Again, another sign of vagal nerve dysfunction. And so, there’s a lot of different techniques that we can use. To, and also constipation by the way, a lot of people have constipation actually have vagal nerve dysfunction because they’re living again in that sympathetic not getting into that relaxed parasympathetic state that allows the, those rhythmic contractions of the intestines and the colon to, to be able to have nice regular poops.

So, in the book, I talk about 10 different ways that we can reactivate the vagus nerve. A lot of it has to do with stress reduction, reducing techniques, using breath work, using meditation. But you can also, because the vagus nerve travels here, so it comes from the brainstem and it travels along the neck on both sides.

on either side of the vocal cord. So, we can do things like gargling, even singing. If you are, if you like to sing, like singing in the bathroom with like this operatic tone where you’re lifting your palate that’s helping to activate your vagus nerve. Or you can take some water, take a glass of water, and put a little bit of water in your mouth and gargle for about one minute or until, the hint is, if you gargle long enough to get a tear in your eye, then that tells you that your vagus nerve fired.

[00:30:45] Gabby Reece: I heard once that when you’re hunched over that you end up in fight or flight. And I would imagine because if it’s in your nature, you were probably vulnerable if you weren’t up and looking but think about the position that we’re all in that. I would imagine not only does it put stress on your system, but I wonder what this shape does. To the vagal nerve because we’re in it so often.

[00:31:09] Dr. Vincent Pedre: So much of it makes sense. I’ll even add something else. I don’t talk about this in the book, but when you’re in this position,

[00:31:18] Gabby Reece: for those of you listening, it’d be like if you’re on your cell phone looking down.

[00:31:21] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yeah. If you’re on, if you’re like the typical person walking and looking at your cell phone, but the cell phone is down here, then You’re constricting the connection of the cranium with C one.

And when that goes outtalk balance, that actually constricts circulation into the, I’m not, it’s not the midbrain, it’s the medulla. It’s the more reptilian brain, but that’s also the part that controls sympathetic parasympathetic balance. And you, when you constrict circulation to that part of your brain, you get more into the sympathetic.

Yeah, I think also, you’re constricting your neck, you’re affecting circulation there as well. And that’s what

[00:32:06] Gabby Reece: Things like that are so important because we have generations of people that they’re in that position all the time. And it doesn’t occur to them, and yet it can really spin you out.

More than normal life stresses already because you’re in these vulnerable positions. And by the way, whoever lives in New York City and is walking around, not looking what’s going on. To me, it’s insane. I see people crossing the street looking at their phone. I, it’s just. I joke that in our house, we have a motto, pay attention.

It’s I think it’s important that, that feels really important. I would love to ask you if you say in your book that women are more prone to autoimmune than men. And there are studies that show, and it’s natural that women are more prone to negative emotion. So, worry, anxiety, is it?

It’s probably a biological reason. I’m sure, it’s, we’re considering all things all at once where sometimes it appears that men seem to be singularly focused more often, again, this feels biological to me. Do you think the autoimmune, and I know its food and it’s all these things, but when I think about it it’s Hey, is it that worry?

Is it that what’s going to happen? Is everyone okay? Are we okay? I wonder sometimes if that opens the door more for those autoimmune.

[00:33:33] Dr. Vincent Pedre: I think of worry or stress as an attack on the gut. And when you activate those sympathetic from being in that worry state, you’re actually going to also increase gut permeability.

But they’ve also have shown in studies that being more in that worry state and stressed out actually also alters the gut microbiome. And that also has an effect on gut permeability and the integrity of the gut border, which becomes the influx for that inflammation that basically overwhelms the immune system and at some point confuses the immune system because there, there is a strong belief that a lot of autoimmunity actually starts in the gut with the breakdown of the gut barrier with leaky gut.

 And yes, there is a genetic predisposition. There is a genetic predisposition that some people maybe are more prone to autoimmune disease. than others. For example, my mother had rheumatoid arthritis and my older sister has MS, multiple sclerosis. And so, when I went on this journey, I was in my 30s and I thought, I’m a male, so maybe I’m less.

At risk, but I’m worried that my gut issues are setting me up for autoimmunity down the road because I’ve got these risk factors that come through my family. And so that really also I’m probably a bit of an unusual male because I’m in the health field that I would be motivated to do things to prevent something way into the future.

I think most people are doing something to get a, an immediate result now. I think now there’s, there’s a lot of biohackers out there who are really looking to optimize. And age better, get into your fifties, sixties, feeling young. And part of that is really taking care of the gut and the gut lining.

 So yeah, so it ties back to leaky gut. And you have to think because there is. The biggest presence of the immune system is around the gut and all the gut lining. 80 percent of our immune system, it is command central for the immune system. But if that command central breaks down, then it’s going to send wrong signals.

And eventually that immune system maybe starts attacking self or maybe through molecular mimicry because the bacteria look like your thyroid and now your body starts attacking your thyroid or gluten itself. then causes thyroid inflammation or your body to confuse certain proteins around the thyroid for gluten because now you’ve developed a sensitivity to gluten with an immune reaction.

And then next thing you’re developing autoimmune thyroid disease when you’ve been completely healthy and have had no issues whatsoever. And I see these patients all the time come in; their thyroid numbers are great. But they have signs of autoimmune thyroiditis. And immediately when I see this, I’m looking at the diet and I’m looking at the gut.

And what are the connections there?

[00:36:57] Gabby Reece: Isn’t it? I feel like I heard this, so maybe you can, you could do this because I have a lot of friends like, Oh, Hashimoto’s and all of this. And it’s only like 20 percent of thyroid has to do with thyroid and like 80 percent of that actually has to do with the gut. And so instead of throwing someone on a thyroid medication, it’d be like, Hey, fix the gut and not put them on a bunch of thyroids

[00:37:18] Dr. Vincent Pedre: medication.

So, the way it works is the thyroid is producing the master hormone T4. It’s like the. It’s like the savings account. It’s the hormone that is the base for the active hormone, which is T3. So T4 has to go through a conversion process. Most of that is not happening in the thyroid.

Actually, 60 percent of it is happening in the liver. And then another 20 percent is actually being done by the gut microbiome. So that T4 is exiting the body, going into the, your, inside your intestinal lumen, and then getting converted to T3 and getting recirculated back into the body. So, if you think about it, between the liver, and the gut microbiome, 80 percent of that T4 is being activated.

And you have to make sure that certain micronutrients are balanced like selenium and zinc to make sure that thyroid hormone is getting converted. So, you’re correct to say that, that a lot of times we blame the thyroid when it’s actually not the thyroid where the real problem is. The thyroid is just the innocent bystander of other issues that are coming from the gut. Yeah.

[00:38:34] Gabby Reece: I’ve always felt because then you go to the doctor typically and you try to be, it’s okay, you need to take this medication. And then I feel like sometimes it pushes our system further out of whack. And then people, they, And I’ve experienced this with injuries where I name them and move them in, it’s Oh, the right knee.

And it’s always going to be like that. And I think we do that. Oh, yeah, my thyroid doesn’t work, or I have autoimmune. And it’s okay that’s just what I’m doing instead of realizing that there really is. There’s so much we can do and things like what you’re talking about people will hear dysbiosis if we can just, cause my whole thing is I would like to take, this best high end information that you produce and make it people for them to really understand.

So, they hear words like dysbiosis, maybe you could just actually define it for them what it is.

[00:39:25] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Imagine if your gut is a garden or this ecosystem like the Amazon rainforest, and that ecosystem thrives on a balance between a lot of different players in there, right? You might have some predators; you’ve got a lot of different plant species and whatnot.

They live in this harmony. Then if, what happens if you get rid of something in that food chain and then the predators start like over reproducing and the next thing you know the entire ecosystem is going off balance? Because of that, that happened in in Yellowstone. I think there was this whole thing with Yellowstone where They tried to get rid of the wolves, but then they realized that it completely disrupted the entire ecosystem.

This same thing can happen inside your gut. When your ecosystem gets out of balance, we call it a dysbiosis, except here we’re talking about the players are all these little bugs that are living inside of us. There’s about a hundred trillion inside the large intestine, and anywhere between five hundred and a thousand different species.

And in that array of bacteria, and other organisms, there’s about, there’s probably like 10 to 12 percent that are quote unquote bad. They’re not good ones, but they are part of the ecosystem that when in balance, it’s okay that they’re there. And the entire ecosystem keeps things in check. The problem is when you do things like eat too much sugar or you go on a round of antibiotics and that comes in and that completely disrupts the ecosystem.

And if you’re highly stressed, if you’re eating a lot of processed foods, if you’re getting a lot of sugar, if you’re getting a lot of omega 6 inflammatory oils, then when that ecosystem is trying to go back into balance, It can’t because you’re not giving it the substrate that it needs in order to go back into that balance.

So, then you had a round of antibiotics and then next thing you know, you’ve got yeast overgrowth. You’re not feeling so great. Then three months down the road, you get sick again, you get another sinus infection, you go on another round of antibiotics and now you get more dysbiosis. And then, and you go on this it becomes like a, almost like a snowball effect.

And I’ve seen these patients because they’ve come to see me after their ENT wanted to put them on a third round of antibiotics. And they’re like, wait a second, and I’m getting yeast infections and I don’t feel well. And that’s because we have to do gut restoration. After the antibiotics, the longer you are in the path, then the more work it’s going to take.

It’s not impossible though. You have to have the right tools and know exactly what to do incorporating the right types of foods that are going to support your gut and your gut lining and the gut microbiome. You

[00:42:26] Gabby Reece: know I really appreciate that because I feel people are very quick to just, Oh I’m sick, so I’ll do antibiotics.

And I feel like with the exception of an infection. Something that’s. there. It’s okay, you have a cold and it might even be a bad cold, but maybe ride it out. But to remind people the seriousness of that, you talk about antibiotics and also things being too clean is not great.

Everybody with their hand sanitizer and just, everything’s wiped down and that this actually isn’t great for us.

[00:42:57] Dr. Vincent Pedre: No, and I think that’s it. It’s quite interesting because the more, if you look at the trend of autoimmune disease in India, as more and more hygienic park practices have been introduced to the country, you see that pre this over hygiene autoimmune disease like bare barely didn’t exist in India.

And then you look through the 19 hundred and you see this incredible rise in autoimmunity. And part of the idea is that. That this over sanitization. Again, same thing as with antibiotics or antimicrobial soaps. They are getting into your system. They are causing a dysbiosis. The dysbiosis, if we’re talking about like a row of dominoes, the dysbiosis is an upstream effect that when that domino tips.

The next one is going to be gut permeability. So, you’re going to get leaky gut and then you get inflammation. And then depending on your own genetics and predisposition and stress levels and what you’re eating and how much sleep you’re getting, then that’s going to predispose you to a whole host of other chronic diseases.

Part of the research that I did for this book, I went to Africa. And I had a chance to basically camp out with the Hamza, which are among the last hunter gatherers on the planet. The reason that I was really gung ho and, like, when I got the invitation, I was like, beside myself, like jumping for joy, like what an opportunity to go meet a human time capsule.

 But really also because they had studied their gut microbiome and seen how diverse their gut microbiome is in comparison to a western gut microbiome. In the studies they had looked at an Italian cohort as the, as a comparison. So, you can imagine Italians are eating tomatoes, pasta, lots of greens, like fresh food, if you’ve been to Italy.

 Like the food in Italy is amazing, right? Like their normal food is what we call organic. It probably is even better than our organic. And so, they compared it to the Italian control group and their gut microbiome was way more diverse. They had less. inflammation. And, but the more important thing is that the Hadza do not get any chronic diseases that we know of, like diabetes, like heart disease, cancer, dementia, like they’re basically resistant to these diseases.

So, we have to look at. What’s going on in the gut? How are they living? They’re not washing their hands. Like they go out for the hunt. They kill an animal. There might be blood on their hands. They are not washing. They’re not sterilizing. There is no concept of that. So, they’re living in this microbial milieu, which in a way, creates a certain level of resilience because it’s like a hermetic stressor.

It’s like what everybody’s doing now, like doing cold plunges and doing sauna therapy and all that. The biggest hermetic stressors to be exposed to nature, to be exposed to the elements, to be exposed to the microbiome of the soil, which then does the opposite. of what dysbiosis does. It enhances the diversity.

It increases biological diversity and gut microbiome diversity, which is to me the holy grail of health. The more diverse you can make your gut microbiome, the healthier and more robust you will be. And that’s a lot of what I talk about in my book is the strategies by which people can do this.

[00:46:44] Gabby Reece: Yeah, and you do mention in how COVID kicked our ass in a whole new interesting way with, every with the hand, washing the hands and everybody not going outside and not being exposed to anything that in a way that how vulnerable that really made us.

 [00:47:00] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Again, like the over sanitization, and I think, look, people do what makes them feel comfortable, right? Part of it is like, what brings a sense of safety to you as a doctor. I’m more on the side of. Yeah, we respect germs, but we also understand that germs are here to work with us.

We live in a milieu; we are in an ocean of germs. There is no way of escaping them. And we’re actually, our bodies have been designed to cohabitate. with these germs because they create resilience in our system and they help program different parts of the system, from the beginning, from when a baby is born and goes through the vaginal canal and gets coded with the microbiome inside the vagina, which is so important.

And then. When they get breastfed and that’s helping feed and build the gut microbiome, that bifidobacterium infantis, which then is programming the amygdala to make the amygdala not overreactive so this child can feel safe and doesn’t have this hyper reactive stress response. That probably we see in, in a lot of people.

I wonder if we trace it back. Were you breastfed? Were you not breastfed? Was your formula fed? Like back in the 60s and 70s, they were telling every mom not to breastfeed their kids, like to formula feed. Yeah. And I was one of them. You are.

[00:48:39] Gabby Reece: Yeah, I it’s funny. I always joke that in parenting, you’re always going to doubt yourself.

Like, how bad did you do? Or, did you do what did you do? How bad did you screw it up? And I was fortunate that I could nurse my children a long time. And I thought, okay, if nothing else, I could have blown everything else. At least it, I did that. And if people, can’t do it for whatever reason.

I totally honor that. That’s not where I’m coming from, but I was just like, if at least we could cover that because you’re always doubting

[00:49:07] Dr. Vincent Pedre: yourself. We’ve come a long way with that too, because the new formulas now have those HMOs, those human milk oligosaccharides, which are necessary.

They’re actually act as a prebiotic to build that gut microbiome of the baby, which is so important for. So many like downstream health effects later on in life

[00:49:30] Gabby Reece: Yeah, all the allergies and all the other things. So, you mentioned prebiotics. So, let’s talk about the things, you talk about fermented foods. And then again, the market is full of like prebiotics and probiotics. Where do you yeah, because it’s, we’re just, we’re always adding more things and I think people already feel overwhelmed. So, this, I, trying to figure out a way to almost simplify this so they have the information and they go, okay, I know at least how to simplify this.

[00:50:06] Dr. Vincent Pedre: That’s really why I start with food and why my second book, my first book, I talked a lot about gut supplements and probiotics and stuff like that.

And I think they’re important and they play a really key role. And patients that I work with one on one we do use a lot of times probiotics for specific things like, Um, like an anti-inflammatory probiotic or for improving gut motility, like my Restore that I make for happy gut.

But I’m also a really big believer in, in understanding what is it that you can do with your nutrition that’s going to have the biggest effects because ultimately, we are what we eat, and our gut microbiome is shaped. By the foods that we’re eating and so you’ve got to get in the ferment You’ve got to get in the fiber in different forms, but you might not be ready for it And that’s why I created the quiz because if you fall in the severe category, there are certain fibers There’s certain and you can’t have fermented foods just yet because they’re going to make you feel bloated and gassy and not so good We’ve got to do some gut healing, and then we can get to the ferment.

What are the fermented foods going to do? They’re going to increase microbial diversity. Okay, so again, ding. Holy grail of health. Working on diversity. And two, they’re going to drop inflammation in your body. There was a study done at Stanford University, where they looked at a high fiber diet versus a high fermented foods diet, and they found that the high fermented foods diet was the one that dropped Inflammation the most in the body, which actually it even surprised me because I actually thought it was going to be the high fiber diet and You wonder okay, so you’re eating this ferment, the ferment, say you’re eating a yogurt, it’s got a lactobacillus bulgaricus, how is that helping me?

How is that having this bigger, broader health effect? It turns out that when you have a food that has been fermented, those bacteria are coming in and they’re influencing the ecosystem. So, we think of things. in, in our Western world is magic bullets like, Oh, it’s this thing. What is this doing?

No, it’s coming in and it’s acting like a conductor and it’s working on the ecosystem because maybe it produces a certain type of postbiotic that another bacterium likes to eat. So now this second and third bacteria species are now growing and they’re favorable ones too because this one arrived.

And it’s creating, it’s created a home for itself, and now it’s helping promote the growth and diversity through other bacteria, because we found that fermented foods increase diversity. So, if you wonder what the right diet for your gut is, you’ve got to get those, the goal is eventually to get those ferments in.

You may not be able to start with them if you’re in the severe category, and when you’re moderate, you can only test out like little bits at a time. The goal is to get you to where you can start having two to three servings of ferments per day, even if possible.

[00:53:28] Gabby Reece: If somebody’s gut was just, we’re going to give it extra love, the score wasn’t great and they’re step by step, what are some of the, what are the things that really are supportive of them in that sort of rebuilding phase?

[00:53:43] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yeah, first of all, is getting those fiber rich foods and getting the ferments. This may be something that Anybody who, I don’t know if your audience is more on the vegetarian, vegan side, or if they’re mixed. Cause, a lot of times I find that if somebody is vegan, it’s really hard to heal the gut. On a vegan diet. I hate to say it because

[00:54:15] Gabby Reece: the fiber is just kicking

[00:54:16] Dr. Vincent Pedre: its butt. It’s too much fiber. It’s the plant the phytic acid. It’s the lectins in the foods. It actually is easier to heal the gut if you can incorporate. Animal protein as part of the protocol. And its part, my, my protocol is open and can be used by anyone. And I speak to a lot of the issues that come up with lectin rich foods and like beans and the need to soak beans and make them more gut friendly. But ideally what I’ve seen in my own experience is that if I can get someone, even if I can get a vegetarian vegan to have some fish as their protein, because a lot of times they won’t eat like land animals. But if they can bring in some of that, that, that is so healing for the gut, it helps. It’s just a much more, uh, bioavailable protein source.

[00:55:13] Gabby Reece: Dr. Pedro, are you walking on eggshells over there? ?

[00:55:17] Dr. Vincent Pedre: I’m just thinking of the vegans. I’m, yeah, I’m talking loving eggshells.

I’m not walking on eggshells, I’m talking on eggshells because I think of the vegans that are going to be, I would say like the worst thing you can do for your gut is eat raw kale. Yeah, of course. . It is the most and the other day I was, I went to. One of these I don’t know if I can mention the chain, but I went to a really reputable salad chain that I go to and they mixed up my order and they gave me kale instead of spinach.

But I didn’t, I, and I thought there was, like, some other things mixed in and I started eating and not realizing and I was just like, wait a second. This is not what I ordered. I had eaten enough that I did not feel well an hour later. Cause that, that kale is just so difficult for the gut to break down.

But really, I, I really am a big believer in a more incorporating. If you look at my, if you look at the food list in Gut Smart protocol, animal protein is all in the severe category. Like all meats, they are much easier on the gut. Now it depends on a lot of issues because if you’re someone that’s I can’t eat red meat because it sits like a brick in my stomach.

You got to look at vagus nerve activation. And you’ve got to look at maybe you’re not producing enough stomach acid. And is that the reason that it’s not sitting well? It’s not that the meat is the problem. It’s that your gut can’t digest that meat because it doesn’t have the digestive power to break it down.

[00:57:02] Gabby Reece: Do you like bitters or anything like

[00:57:04] Dr. Vincent Pedre: that? Love bitters. I know that not everybody is into bitters, but I think bitters are a great way to promote Digestion, along with incorporating ferments, but like bitter lettuces, like radicchio, or even taking bitters before a meal to, to really start to stimulate the digestive juices.

Or also another example would be to use apple cider vinegar pre meals, like a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar and a little bit of water. You got to find what works for you and what you like. So not everything is for everyone, and a lot of times there’s different roads that all lead to Rome. So, you can use, you can tailor the path to what you like, while following the bigger rules, which are like, don’t have artificial sweeteners.

avoid excess added sugar, and if you want to heal your gut, you can’t have your drink and heal your gut too. I

[00:58:04] Gabby Reece: think that’s really important. You created a beautiful roadmap in the Gut Smart protocol and after dealing with patients and looking at things, but people have to still, this goes back to know yourself and how does things feel and what’s your lifestyle?

I’m certainly not interested. I could care less about telling people what to do. And I get that from you too. It’s like these are invitations to explore and see how you’re feeling and see what works. But also, what’s showing up. I’m curious, you mentioned the bean thing because a lot of people be like, oh, beans.

But I did learn Simon Hill is a really knowledgeable. Vegan, vegetarian advocate. And he does talk about if people want to introduce more beans, sometimes you have to do it slow and you talk about soaking them and maybe it’s not eating a ton at first that the body needs to get the right microbiome set up in order to digest them.

So, I just want to remind people of that. They go, I can’t eat beans. It’s you might be able to. There are some little hacks too using kombu seaweed when you’re cooking the beans. So that helps break down the sugar in the beans and you can also add a little bit of baking soda as well to reduce the gassiness that’s produced by the beans.

But I also agree, you’re anytime you’re shifting your diet, you’re actually also shifting the microbiome. So, in this Stanford study, when they had people increase their fermented foods, they also started feeling a bit gassy initially by having more fermented foods, but by the end of the study they were actually that had leveled off and they were feeling okay.

 [00:59:40] Gabby Reece: Yeah, so I just think those reminders that everything is sometimes go a little slow, go less, soak it, do things that are more

[00:59:47] Dr. Vincent Pedre: gentle. Don’t go American, don’t supersize it. I

[00:59:51] Gabby Reece: know, we do that. All or nothing. Galt. G A L T. Can we just mention that, talk about?

[01:00:01] Dr. Vincent Pedre: that a little bit? The gut associated lymphatic tissue.

Yeah. Yeah. It’s basically the housing of the immune system all along the gut lining. And it’s super important because it’s basically liked our border patrol and it’s sensing and checking what’s coming through that gut lining. And whenever something gets through that is not supposed to get through, again, we’re talking about leaky gut.

 Imagine that gut lining this finely woven fabric. With no holes between the cells and then if it becomes leaky, it’s like poking holes in between those cells. So now things can get through the gut lining that are not supposed to get through like partially digested protein particles. And we have these cells that we call dendritic cells and they’re like the border patrol.

They’re just walking around. They’re just like doop de doo. Hey, what’s this? Oh, I don’t recognize this. This peanut protein, this is not something we know. Let me go present it to the T and the B cells and activate the immune response because I don’t know who these are. And then on the other side of the gut lining, you’ve got the probiotic bacteria, the lactobacilli, for example, who are communicating With our immune system through that gut lining, this is quite fascinating because the, when you have the right amount of probiotic bacteria, they will different, they will help T cells differentiate into T regulatory cells.

And just like the name implies, the T regulatory cell is a cell that regulates. the immune response. So basically keeps, it’s a conductor that keeps the immune response from getting out of hand when it doesn’t need to. And so, we’re having this co regulation. We’ve got the border patrol. And at the same time, we’ve got the good guys on the other side saying, hey guys, chill out.

It’s okay. Yeah, relax. Everything’s fine. We’re keeping things borders good. You guys over there stay calm. Let’s get some Treg cells. We’re going to, we’re going to make sure you don’t overreact. Let’s not cause too much inflammation. That way we keep the rest of the body healthy.

[01:02:26] Gabby Reece: I feel like sometimes in living and trying to be a human being because by nature, right?

We’re anxious. We have certain things that are built within us to keep us alive. But that I always say exercise is a really cheap medicine. And if we can figure out how to keep our microbiome, it’s almost like just an easier way to make things easier. The

[01:02:47] Dr. Vincent Pedre: freest thing you can do. is take a deep breath.

Just breathe. And it’s actually a medicine. It’s a tool that we carry and it’s within our access. It’s like this incredible ability that we have to re-regulate our nervous system just by learning to breathe with our diaphragm and not breathing up here with our accessory muscles that gets your body into a state of healing.

And everybody can do it. And it just requires, I have a whole lesson on that in chapter 10 on the vagus nerve on how to do deep diaphragmatic breathing, because then it becomes a foundation for the breath work and the meditation exercises that are in the other chapters that I included in the book, including from other teachers that we had and recorded.

So, people can actually go to gutsmartprotocol. com and watch. the meditations, breath work, or listen. If you just want the audio and you want to be able to do it at home, you go to gutsmartprotocol. com and you can check out those. Those resources. So

[01:04:00] Gabby Reece: Dr. Pedre, I have to ask, teenagers, that time in our life, I feel like that’s when we eat the wildest food usually, and that’s a lot of times you got hormones going and everyone thinks that skin issues is because of the hormones, but I can’t help but think that It is a stressful time.

It’s a confusing time of life, but also, we’re eating wild foods is that it’s just only I can feel like skin issues get accentuated so much by they probably are also experiencing torching their guts simultaneously.

[01:04:35] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yeah, I it gives me an internal chuckle because when I was a kid, my, my family migrated from Cuba to avoid communism, and my mother would tell me stories of family members that I never met, and I had a great uncle who was a doctor, and he was not only like well-known and respected throughout the kind of like the entire center of Cuba, but he was also a comedian and he would walk with my mom and look at people and tell her what their underlying issues were.

And I always, as a child, I was fascinated by that. How can he know just by looking at the person that they’ve got this and this? And now I can do that just by looking at someone, the skin is the outer picture of what’s going on inside the gut. I call our gut, our inner skin. And it’s basically a mirror of what’s happening on the outside.

And when you see stuff on the skin is because things are happening. And a lot of times with teenagers, it has to do with the types of foods that they’re eating, the processed foods, the sugar, the inflammatory oils, all of that is going to show up in the face. And I actually, I have a teenager myself. He’s 19 years old now.

So, I watched him go through the teenage years. The thing is, we never raised him with using food as a reward. So, we never created. a reward system between Oh, you behave well, let’s go get ice cream. Or here’s a cookie. Cause if you behave well, I’ll give you a cookie. So, we were really sensitive to that.

We never did that growing up. So, we didn’t want to create that negative. It’s almost liked a positive negative association between food and reward. Because then what happens is that the adult is stressed, and they feel I deserve this ice cream because I’m stressed. And I’m going to reward myself because I had a hard day.

So, I’m going to have that cookie or I’m going to have that donut. And I saw him go through his teenage years and go through his hormone. Spurred in everything and with barely any acne whatsoever. Yeah. raised on whole foods, clean foods, lots of greens, whole things, not a lot of processed foods and I would say the big ones to think about, whether it’s an adult or a teenager, it’s processed sugar.

That’s going to show up on the face and it’s affecting the gut microbiome. And that shows up on the face. and also, interestingly eating too many spicy foods. I’ve also seen that cause.

[01:07:23] Gabby Reece: You mean the chips, the weird chips and stuff, or when you say spicy, you mean

[01:07:27] Dr. Vincent Pedre: yeah, like spicy like a jalapeno, all that, like eating too many of those spicy sauces that can also show up in the face.

And it’s something that I always love working with people because it’s so easy to say, okay, tell me how you’re eating. I already know but tell me. And if we change certain things, your skin is going to start to clear up. Dairy also, by the way, dairy is another big one or eating those, those health bars, those protein bars that are supposed to be healthy, but you look at the ingredients and they’ve got 13 grams of sugar and it’s all sorts of, they have

[01:08:07] Gabby Reece: to cough for all’s and sunflower oil and all kinds of craziness in there. So, in wrapping this up Dr. Pedre, the encouraging thing is that it feels like a mountain, but it actually, in some cases, the gut starts to heal very quickly.

[01:08:29] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yeah. Even the microbiome shifts.

Within 24 to 48 hours by you changing the way that you’re eating. Now the more ingrained changes are going to take a bit longer. Like when you’re rebuilding the gut and you’re rebuilding gut diversity and you want to lower your inflammation you can’t think Oh, I’m going to just change my diet for the weekend, and I’ll be fine by Monday.

Maybe you could do that when you were in your twenties. But if you’re in your 40s, 50s, 60s, there’s more accumulated damage and it’s going to happen. It’s just, it’s going to maybe take a little bit longer to get there. And the most important thing that you need is one, the knowledge that this stuff works.

And two then, the un the blinded, the unblinded commitment to continue even when it feels like it’s not working. Because depending on and what I think is the shortest period where I see results is that two week period. And that’s why I made my program 14 days long because 14 days to me is the minimum to start to see shifts.

My hope is that if you can just dedicate who can’t do 14 days, two weeks, that’s not a lot. That’s right. You get to those ends of that, those 14 days. You start seeing some positive changes and then you stick with it for another 14 days at the end of the month You’re going to feel very different than you felt on day one and your score is going to have improved And then if you continue that like when I went gluten free for the first time I felt a progressive improvement.

The first two weeks was amazing. Like by the end of the two weeks, I had all this energy, but even at the end of the month, I felt even better. My gut was getting better. I was eating, more greens and bringing in fermented foods and taking probiotic. but I didn’t imagine that at three months.

I would feel better than I did at the end of the first month. And that at six months, I felt even better in my body. It was hard to pinpoint exactly what the things were, but at six months, I felt even better than at three months. And sometimes it’s just, it comes in subtle changes, but I say this for the people who get to the end of that first month or the end of the two weeks and then they give up because they think I haven’t seen enough changes.

What I’ve found is that sometimes the changes happen in little quantum steps. But it’s like nothing is happening, and then suddenly you have a quantum improvement and you see a change. And what that means is that during that period that you thought that nothing was happening, what was happening was at the microscopic level, tissues were healing, your gut is healing.

Now remember the gut surface area is like as big as a tennis court. It’s huge. So that doesn’t heal overnight and sometimes the level of healing like is if this is your inflammation level, but this is your threshold, it’s lowered your threshold for where you’re going to start feeling things. And this is month one, you haven’t hit the threshold.

So, you’re like I feel a little better, but I’m not quite better. So, I’m just going to go back to eating the way I used to eat. But then you get to month. month two, month three, then say you cross that threshold at month four, it could be earlier. It depends on where your base was how much inflammation, where were you before that?

It could be at the end of month one, two, once you cross that threshold. You start to see the changes and it’s who doesn’t like when you go to the gym and you start feeling, after a couple of weeks, you start feeling the effects of going to the gym and then you’re addicted because you feel good, but the you that existed maybe two months ago didn’t want to get up and you were lazy and you were resisting going to the gym.

But once you break through that, there’s all this, it’s energy that comes behind it and the same thing happens when you heal the gut. Once you get to that certain point where you realize that you feel a certain way when you eat a certain way, it becomes super easy to say no to the things that you know are going to damage you.

 [01:13:15] Gabby Reece: And that often in the beginning feels impossible. And I always want to couch the question to people in the end, it’s like you’re worth it. You the person is worth it. You’re worth you. You should feel good. You should have energy. You shouldn’t, it shouldn’t be hard and feel creaky. And if you’re trying to, lose weight or you’re navigating skin issues are very challenging.

I have friends that have eczema, and this is no joke. These are. These are difficult things to just encourage people to remember that they’re valuable, they’re worth it. And that but you have to stand up for yourself and you also have to be accountable. And your book in the gut smart protocol, you really lay it out, like the fact that you have the quiz and that people can navigate from wherever they’re starting.

And there’s, and when I say this in a great way, you were able to hold. our hand in the book to, discover, what path people need to take. So, I really appreciate how thoughtful it is and how complete it is. It isn’t Hey, you got to heal your gut. It’s yeah.

Okay. What does that mean? I don’t know what that means. And then, And wrapping it up and I know it’s not for everybody, but are there supplements that you are like, these tend to be pretty, and I know we love food first, but is there anything on the extra that I forgot that you go, Hey, this usually tends to be pretty supportive.

 [01:14:37] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Absolutely. L glutamine, for example, very simple, a singular amino acid that has. And study after study supporting its effects in helping heal the gut, but also glycine, which is very rich in collagen. So, collagen powder can be really great for the gut. Also great for the skin but collagen is rich in glycine and glycine is cellular.

It basically helps with cellular repair. I’m also a big fan of leaky gut. We call them a leaky gut formula, gut supportive formulas that have the L glutamine that have the marshmallow root extract, the slippery elm bark, the aloe, the DGL, all of these things together. Like I put with some of the, one of the products that I have with happy gut and also, what’s in

[01:15:27] Gabby Reece: hands are enhanced.

[01:15:30] Dr. Vincent Pedre: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It’s our leaky gut formula. Yeah, that has all these things and also zinc carnosine because a lot of these Use different types of zinc, but it’s really zinc carnosine, which has been shown to Heal the lining of the stomach so people with who are suffering from gastritis This is a really good one for them.

Of course, different types of probiotics, and I’ve used different probiotics throughout the years. The ones that are in Restore are clinically researched strains that reduce inflammation, improve gut motility, and help Reestablish the balance of the microbiome, but there are other ones out there that I’m a big fan of like spore based probiotics.

I use them a lot, especially in people who are really bloated or people who have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or are battling with that. Then I go for a spore based probiotic first and stay away from all of the other traditional types of probiotics. I’m also a really big fan of. Things like if you’re going on antibiotics, Saccharomyces boardie is a great adjunct.

It’s a gut protector. It protects and coats the gut lining. So, if you’re going on antibiotics, then go on Saccharomyces boardie at the same time. It’s part of what I do with my own patients. Every time I’m putting them on antibiotics, I’m putting them on a gut recovery. protocol at the same time. And there’s something else called, so people probably know colostrum is the kind of the part of milk that has all the immune factors, but a lot of people have dairy sensitivity and might have an immune reaction to even some of the, still some of the dairy proteins that might be in colostrum.

And for those, I really serum derived bovine immunoglobulins or SBIs. And they’ve been shown to bind things like endotoxin. They bind mycotoxins. They help improve the integrity of the gut lining. So, for healing the gut lining and for anybody who tends to suffer more with diarrhea side, there’s a lot of people out there who have constipation, but there’s also a lot of people who have IBS D with diarrhea or mixed IBS for those people that SBIs work.

Amazing. And you might have to cycle on and off because they tend to cause constipation. So, you have to be careful with that. And so, I’m usually when I’m working one on one with people, I’m teaching them how to use the supplements and how to take them because sometimes you’ve got to be able to take a little more, maybe take a little less.

Depending on what’s happening in your body for the same thing with magnesium like taking magnesium for constipation or Trifola for constipation, which is an it’s a combination of three Indian Superfruits that help with gut motility Those you sometimes have to take more you sometimes take less So it’s not a, you’re not always taking the same dose.

You’ve got to learn to listen to your body and regulate the amount that you take, depending on how your gut and your body is behaving.

[01:18:41] Gabby Reece: Okay. Just to remind people, cause it’s a lot, the Gut Smart protocol and Dr. Vincent Pedre, thank you so much. for your time. I know we had, we were a little glitchy, but this message is so important because it is such a foundation for people’s health, like you said.

And we want everyone to feel as, as good as they can. And just to remind them also to just take a deep breath. So, thank you for your time

[01:19:04] Dr. Vincent Pedre: today. Thank you. Thanks for having me. This was Great to be on here and share this message with your audience.

[01:19:14] Gabby Reece: Thank you for listening to this week’s episode. If you want to learn more, there is a ton of valuable information on my website. All you have to do is go to Gabrielle Reese. com or head to the episode show notes to find a full breakdown with helpful links to studies, research, books, podcasts, and so much more. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out and send them to at Gabby Reese on Instagram. And if you feel inspired, please subscribe. I’ll see you next week.

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About Dr. Vincent Pedre