Breakthroughs in Bio-Hacking with Functional Medicine Expert, Adam Banning


Breakthroughs in Bio-Hacking with Functional Medicine Expert, Adam Banning


Liz and her expert guest, Functional Medicine Author and Lecturer, Adam Banning; explore natural breakthroughs in the treatment of Sleep Disorders, Depression, and Common GI Issues.


Episode Transcript
- It's once again time to get gutsy with Liz Hall and her expert guests on the Gutsy Babe Podcast. - Welcome to the Gutsy Babe Podcast. I'm your host, Liz Hall. On today's episode, we'll be talking about breakthroughs in natural medicine with my guest functional medicine author, lecturer, and all around expert Adam Banning. Adam, welcome to the Gutsy Bay Podcast. - Ooh, I am so happy to be here. Just pick my brains. Here we go. - I have so many questions for you, Uhhuh. So why don't we just get started. So, Adam, you had mentioned there is a direct connection between inflammation and depression. Can you discuss that for our listeners? - You know, it's really interesting, lots of clinicians, up until about, hmm, around 20 years ago right now, um, had a suspicion that when individuals were inflamed, especially in regards to chronic joint issues like rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis and things like that, they tended to be sadder. They tended to have more melancholy, but the actual connection between systemic inflammation of those types of disorders Mm-Hmm. , um, and now they're finding out with such simple things as the inflammation that you would have from bleeding gums, periodontal disease, something that half of America suffers from. Mm-Hmm. When you have that inflammation, what they found out is it stops the conversion of a amino acid, where we're used to bumping into it and hearing about it on Thanksgiving. That being tryptophan from the turkeys, okay. It stops the conversion, the natural conversion of tryptophan into something called serotonin, which we know is the happy neurotransmitter. Okay. You get serotonin, you're happier, you're calmer. So basically, they found out that even relatively small amounts of inflammation can, can inhibit the conversion from tryptophan to serotonin. And that is the connection. It's known within the research studies as the cytokine depression connection, cytokine stands for communicators of inflammation. - I feel that the older you get, the more your body gets inflamed . So that could be - Depressing. Isn't that interesting, ? Yeah. Also, there was some interesting studies I looked at the other day in regards to allergies, how as people grow older, they develop more allergies, - Which is very true with me personally. - I isn't that interesting? Yes. So, so I I, I mean, it's interesting. I've been working on something right now in regards to building up my body's intracellular glutathione. Do you, do you want me to share this with, with the, with the people - Please. - So what I was doing, I was, I was saying, is there some way to make my cells younger? I mean, everybody asks that question from Ponsa Deion, who's searching for it in Florida to find the mountain of youth all the way to every scientist and, and now and every consumer. Um, one of the interesting things is that they're starting to accept, and there's almost a consensus amongst the medical research community that if you have more, more glutathione in your cells, okay, the substance known as glutathione, it's known as intracellular glutathione. Okay. - How do you know, like, what kind of test is this? Like, - Well, those kind of tests, those kind of tests are still tests that are done at major universities as research. Okay. No, - Like how do you like, get a blood test with your doctor to ask how if your little od - Is, you can't, you can't, no, you can't. See, that's - What I, - It's still in the area of research. Okay. So you would literally have to be part of a research study that was looking for it. - Got it. - But I'm standing there going, well, they've documented. I mean, I, I, I would love anybody out there to look up glutathione and aging. Look it up on, on, on, on your, what you got on your little Google machine. Google - That - , and you'll see crazy, really well established bigger studies which show that when individuals have more glutathione inside their cells, they use an, an instance within the study of a 74-year-old man who had a chronological age of 74, but he had a biological age, which means the functioning of his body, and that includes skin and things like that of a 40-year-old. Okay. And they found out that the only thing that was different was a high intracellular glutathione. Then on the other end of it, like people like Kurt Cobain, you know, from the, from the nineties, the grunge era. Okay. Yeah. He literally took, and, and his body had very low intracellular glutathione in it. Even at 27, he probably had that of a, a 70 or 80-year-old in that level. And, you know, it made it much more easily for such things as overdoses to affect you and kill you off. Mm-Hmm. . So the situation is, is I said to myself, how do I increase intracellular glutathione? Um, and, and, and, you know, how do I experience this whole thing? I decided to be able to start taking a supplement, which is alpha lipoic acid. Now, this is where it's interesting, many people out there are like, oh, I take alpha lipoic acid, but they take the L form of it, L as in Larry, as opposed to the R form, right? - Oh, - Yes. The L form, I mean, the therapeutic amounts I'm looking for are over a thousand milligrams a day, okay. Of alpha lippo acid in my body. All the research, by the way, was done on intravenous, not on taking it orally. Okay? So people are out there trying to replicate this great research to get a thousand milligrams into their system, but guess how much you absorb what percentage you absorb from just regular alpha lipoic acid? The lfor, they, they don't use the word l it's just listed as alpha lipoic acid, one to 2% of it. One - To 2%. That's it. - Literally, you would have to make, make those numbers, you'd have to take between three and six bottles a day. It's crazy, not doable. The second - Component of, uh, oral, like liquid supplements, powder supplements, because it does absorb in your body a - Lot. Well, there's, there's a lot of different kinetics and a lot of different research in, in regards to different forms of the powders and the actual liquids, and also binding them to fats as well, which seems to do amazing things for absorption. So that's, that was the, that was the L form and all the research was done on the R form. If you get the R form, it costs three times as much. And I'm like, why does it cost three times as much? Looked at the research, it's absorbed 10 to 15% of it, as opposed to one to 2% of it. Okay, then, but you still need to take a bottle a day to hit those numbers. Oh my god. Okay. Crazy. So I found this form, it's called lipo spheric. You can find that online. Just look it up. Lip aspheric, r alpha lipoic acid. Okay. It's absorbed not one or 2%, not 10 or 15%, 60% absorbed. Okay. So instead of me, that's, that's pretty impressive, right? That's what I take. I take the equivalent of 60% of the amount. I take approximately 1500 milligrams of it, okay? On a day in this lipo spheric form, it comes in packets. Um, and uh, I woke up after about nine days of this, and I looked in the mirror and I'm like, where are the ridges on the bags underneath my eyes? 'cause I had to, - I have to say, you do look good, . - Thank you, thank you so much. And I was, I looked looking in the mirror, I was like, am I still dreaming? I really thought that. I was like, and then I just looked, I'm going, no, the ridges are gone and the wrinkles on your forehead are like down by, you know, 50, 75% and then around your eyes. So I was like, wow. I also started noticing my digestive track started getting younger. Okay. My poops are just amazing these days, you know? Now. Yes, I do use what you called, I do use a, a, your product name the product again, come on here. - Travel - Travele. And where do you get that? Oh, hold on a second. Ee z natural health.com. I mean, that stuff's the bomb. I, I, i, I just gotta say - Thank you for the plug, . - Little, little plug stuff works well, come on. We're talking about stuff that works here. Okay. great. Marvelous. But boy, my pooping with this has just been just absolutely amazing. So this, this stuff called, um, alpha Lipoic Acid is really amazing at building this intracellular glutathione, and I'm feeling it in my days. So I highly recommend that specific form, that lipo spheric form of it. Try to get about 1500 milligrams in a day. - Alright, that sounds like it's the Fountain of Youth. Is this the secret - ? I, I, i, I, I don't know. I think, I think our friend nce, you know, remember Nce Pon Deon, um, I think Pons would be very happy with us right now, so, - Well, that's exciting. You, you heard it here, ladies and gentlemen on the Gutsy Babe podcast. That this, it could be the secret to the Fountain of Youth. - Oh my goodness gracious. Listen in, make sure you write stuff down and make sure you subscribe and like, thank you. He goes, we gonna, we gonna take your wrinkles away? No, there we go. . - Well, speaking, going back to the inflammation, and it's made a huge, clearly, it's made a huge difference in, in your life currently. Yeah. I've been, uh, drinking mushroom coffee - Uhhuh. Okay. - And I've noticed a difference in my own body with the aches and pains that it has taken it away. Yeah. So I've stopped taking my regular caffeinated coffee and I've switched it to mushroom coffee lately, and I've noticed a huge difference with the inflammation in my body. - You know, there's the, the mechanism behind that is very, very interesting. Mm-Hmm, . What these mushrooms do is they modulate immune response. Mm-Hmm. , when you have to deal with drugs, they either boost something or they inhibit something. Okay? Yeah. So if it's too low, take this, it'll boost it. So on and so forth. When you start working with these adaptogenic mushrooms Mm-Hmm. it normalizes things, okay? Mm-Hmm. doesn't boost your immune system doesn't lower it, it normalizes it. So when you have a normalized immune system, when you feel aches and pains in your body, generalized aches and pains, to a very, very large extent, it's due to, and this is according to naturopathic medicine, it's due to an imbalance of immune responses in the gut. Okay? And if we balance that out, you're gonna end up with those sym with those loss of symptoms that you're having there, which is dynamite. Good on you. - Yeah. Well that's the whole premise of the gutsy babe listening to your gut. And - That's right. - The gut is your core, right? They call that your second brain. - Yep. - So really focusing on fixing your gut to being extremely healthy could change your whole dynamic on the way. - Most definitely. And if you trust your gut as it's as I know you do , you'll go far as well, - . Exactly. - Marvelous. Marvelous. - Alright. So how does getting covid play a role in depression and in insomnia? - Oh, this is really, really interesting. Let's take a look at what covid shows up as. Okay. Mm-Hmm. covid is very interesting, you know, yes it is a virus, but it acts more like an inflammatory disorder. Okay? Mm-Hmm. , one of the examples of this is, is um, what they started noticing in individuals who got covid is that they found out those individuals, if they had themselves like a knee injury earlier on in life, their knee would flare up if they had themselves weaknesses within their lung, maybe that asthma earlier on in life, they don't even have it now. It would come back again. Okay. - Which I do have, I have asthma. - Yeah. So the situation is, is it will take with adding inflammation and it will take the areas of possible weakness in your body and make them come pop out. Okay? But the real point of this is it's probably more of an inflammatory disorder in the way it acts than a virus per se. So when we stand there and we go, oh my goodness gracious, if it's giving us that systemic inflammation, it's going back to that whole inflammation depression connection. Okay? So if we have ourselves this excess of inflammation in our body through having covid, and sometimes it lingers, that's that long covid thing that one outta 10 people get who get covid, okay? Then it's going to take and inhibit our ability to make serotonin. That's not good. It's not only not good in regards to staying happy and calm, but it's not good for something else, which is interesting. It's not good for sleep right? Now if we take a look at your sleep during the night, okay, we'll get at into that a little bit more. But if we take a look at your sleep during the night, we find out that serotonin is responsible for 60% of a healthy sleep cycle. If you don't have good amounts of serotonin, you're not getting good sleep. So depression and insomnia can be linked back to systemic inflammation. And covid acts more like an inflammatory disorder than it does a virus, - Which makes that all makes sense. Yeah. And sleeping is obviously very important. That's where your body heals. And if you're not sleeping, of course it's gonna exasperate all the inflammation in your body. Mm-Hmm. and cause depression. - So - To simplify it, for me, that makes sense. - I'm the science guy. We count on people like you to be able to take our complex con concepts and get them out to the world in a way that people go, oh, I get that. So thank you - . So when we're talking about insomnia, you had spoken of treating this health challenge and more of a patient centered fashion by identifying a person's sleep type. Can you tell us more about this approach and the specific treatments for each type? - Sure. I'll even bring your listeners through it so they can sort of figure out what they are. How's that sound? - That'd be great. I'd like to know what sleep type I'm . - So there's three different areas in which I'm gonna ask you a question about, and you are going to, and the audience is going to take and go, okay, which area bothers me the worst about my sleep disturbance? Okay, I'll give you three different things. A, I have problems getting to sleep. B, I have problems staying asleep. Like I wake up in the middle of the night, like at three in the morning or whatever, you know, or C, when I wake up in the morning, even though I may have had a full night's sleep, I still feel like crap. Okay. So I have problems getting to sleep, staying asleep, or waking up feeling refreshed. Alright? You figure out the one that is the most bothersome out of those three for you. So which would it be for you? - Um, it's between B and C. - Between B and C. So the situation is, is that you sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, and when you wake up in the morning, you find yourself on a regular basis or only A, A, a, a what? Call only a sporadic basis, waking up feeling tired. - I wake up multiple times throughout the night, so we'll go with B. - Mm-Hmm, , let's go with B. That sounds great. Mm-Hmm, . So the situation is that we're dealing with B at this point. B is interesting because the folks at Jocelyn Diabetes Center, that's the, um, the diabetes arm of Harvard Medical, okay? Coined a term known as nocturnal hypoglycemia. Okay? Nocturnal hypoglycemia is when you have interruptions in your sleep during the night, during the night, or you fully wake up. And the worst case scenario of it is when you wake up and run for water, one run to urinate or run for a midnight snack. Those are the worst case scenarios of it. It means that your blood sugar took a drop and all of a sudden your dreams are like, Hey, I got no more sugar to be able to, you know, fuel my brain here during these dreams. Wake up. Okay? That can cause problems because waking up and breaking your healthy sleep cycles makes you feel like crud in the morning. Here's a simple way that you can deal with that and everybody in the audience can deal with that. Individual has problems. Staying asleep in the middle of the night is you wanna be able to make sure your blood sugar dips less in the middle of the night. So what I would recommend is, if you are not allergic to peanuts, if you are, don't do that. But if you're not allergic to peanuts, take yourself a tablespoon of peanut butter. Make sure it has no sugar in it. 'cause remember, if we take something very sugary late at night before you go to bed, it's gonna form a rebound effect and you'll end up crashing anyway. So no sugar, peanut butter or no sugar almond butter. Okay? Tablespoon before you go to bed, that will even out your blood sugar response and you won't have that dip. And chances are you will wake up less often, if at all during the middle of the night. - Okay? I'm gonna test this out because I wake up to go to the bathroom consistently, right? I always assumed that it was just because I have a small bladder or you know, I don't drink enough water during the day, and so I'll drink a glass before bed, which is the worst thing to do. I'm aware of that. And, um, that's a whole other subject of dehydration and hydration. - There we go. And we can get into that at another time. Yeah. , , there's so much to talk about. - Uh, but I do like to eat pistachios before bed. And I know that has melatonin in it. - It does have some melatonin in it, but you know, the interesting thing that I've started discovering from neurologists out there who do lots of sleep work is mm-Hmm, is that if there are ways of triggering your own melatonin, okay? It's better off than taking melatonin. Because more often than not, you're not hitting the sweet spot in regards to the best specific dosage for you, okay? Right? So, um, triggering melatonin is very, very interesting because when we stand there, we go, okay, when does melatonin come in? Melatonin actually comes in when the sun goes down, okay? It sends to the circadian rhythms in your brain. It says it's time to produce this stuff to allow you to go into rest and repair state. We call this sleep. So now we are going to make melatonin for you. It says it with that weird sort of announcer thing, , you know, it sounds like a Monty Python thing inside your head. So the situation is, it's saying that, now guess what happens when the sun comes up in the morning there, there's light. So it says, I am switching off Mel and his melatonins, and we are turning on s and her serotonins. , okay? And then all of a sudden Mel says, bye-bye. And Sarah says, Hey, good morning. Now, if you're not a morning person, that could be annoying, but hey, that's Sarah's personality. Alright? So as you're dealing with that, that's what happens. So the sunlight and the night gives us this normal thing, but when you have yourself a situation in which you are literally, and now the sunlight it sees, the thing that triggers the w the waking up is the blue tones in the sunlight, okay? The trigger of turning off the melatonin and turning on the serotonin. Now the blue tones. But what if you give artificial blue tones in the middle of the night when you should be producing melatonin? I mean, the lights are down. Your body's saying, I'm gonna produce a melatonin party. And you're saying, no, no, no. Hold on a second here. A little sobriety for you. I'm gonna give you some blue lights. Oh my goodness. Why are you doing that to me? It says, and the blue lights come from your computers. They come from your phones, they come from your TV sets. Okay? Mm-Hmm, and even forms of light as you sleep that go through your eyelids. So some people sleep with a nightlight. They found out the absolute worst thing for two things, being able to stay asleep and have proper melatonin levels. Mm-hmm. . And also for gaining weight, very interestingly, having either blackout curtains or wearing a mask is one of the most important parts they're starting to find out in regards to weight loss programs. But getting full night's sleep too. So if you're in a situation where you have those switcher code, where you have those screens on, give yourself a break an hour or two before you go to bed. Worst comes to worst. And you must watch social media, which I question your I question that. Um, but in that worst case scenario, then wear some blue blocker glasses. Okay? So we can block those so you don't get affected. - Great advice. - There you go. It's all good stuff. So the different types of what you call it, uh, sleep types. Mm-Hmm. is an individual. If the person says, well, my primary problem is I just can't get to sleep. When I get to sleep, it's all good. But when I, I can't get to sleep. Those people are the people that, yeah, you may treat with some melatonin, that's fine. Those are the people you wanna work with their, with their sleep hygiene. So make sure the room is dark and make sure no screens after a certain point, okay? Those individuals also are individuals many times if they're stressed, okay? And they're going to bed and they're having problems sleeping because they are thinking a lot, okay? The overthinkers, it's stressed and overthinking. They call it stressed and worried within sleep architecture, those individuals, there's a Chinese, um, approach, which is known as Jujube or Sisyphus. Same thing. And you can, you can simply get it at a Whole Foods or you can get it at a a health food store. Um, it's relatively innocuous, but strangely enough it takes and calms down what they call your liver fire in Chinese medicine, which all these different thoughts come up from it, okay? It calms it down and people just get to bed and they think less. So juju B or YP can be helpful for those people, for an individual who has tight muscles and things like that. Taking something simple like, like, um, uh, a taking like calm with magnesium and calcium in it, one of those powders, you know what I mean? Which is a magnesium powder that can be helpful as well. But boy oh boy, if you don't handle your sleep hygiene with darkness and taking care of those blue screens, uh, all bets are off. So that's the first type. I can't get to sleep. Second type we discussed, which was the nocturnal hypo, hypo, uh, uh, hypoglycemics. Okay? Um, uh, and, and see if you can intercede in regards to the, uh, having the, uh, uh, the, the nut butter before going to bed. And then the last type is the sleep architecture type. That's where basically your cycles of sleep throughout the night got disturbed in certain types of ways. So you wake up feeling like garbage in that situation. And if it's that last one, I highly recommend people going for a sleep study, okay? To really get the full Monty when it comes to all the different types of hygiene. You can have ways of handling it. 'cause that one's a deeper area. And I'd highly recommend that, especially for people who chose that is the number one thing that bothers them. That area can also be, interestingly enough, a low thyroid, okay? So you wanna be able to take a look at it, go to the experts, get a full sleep study, check in with your, with your, uh, primary care physician, um, as it relates to the findings of the sleep study, so you can get an overall look in regards to your bodily health, - Right? Yeah. Great. Now I know my sleep type. There - You go - This out with some, uh, no sugar almond butter. There - You go. I knew, I knew you'd be shooting for almond butter. You health girl. - So many p excuse me. So many people suffer from pain, but can't tolerate over the counter pain meds like ibuprofen. Mm-Hmm. Can you share some of the most effective therapies for pain? - Well, the first thing we wanna take a look at here is we take a look at aspirin. Aspirin's actually made out of white willow bark. I mean, literally aspirin, the stuff which is an original pain liver, and now they use it more for blood thinning. You know, aspirin was made from something in nature. So understand that most of these drugs had some sort of original roots in your backyard or on a mountaintop somewhere. So that's one thing to take into account here. If we take a look at the research in comparison, um, for individuals with osteoarthritis pain, um, as it relates to comparing ibuprofen to turmeric, they found out that individuals who are taking turmeric along with black pepper, which activates the turmeric and makes it easier to absorb, okay? Mm-Hmm, actually had better results than the ibuprofen. Now, albeit they needed to take high amounts of it, but there's one simple way in which you can take high amounts of turmeric besides becoming an expert in Indian cooking. Okay? And that is with a good brand of golden milk powder. Mm-Hmm, okay. Mm-Hmm. , which has tons of turmeric in it with a couple of other spices in there, which also tend to be anti-inflammatory. Usually they put a little black pepper in there too. Mm-Hmm, , okay? It's known in the, in the biochemical world as bio parin, but it helps to absorb the turmeric. And by just having a simple one for breakfast and one in the evening, you can get those higher amounts. So you don't take the NSAIDs, non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, which the, um, uh, the ibuprofen is. So why do you wanna not take the ibuprofen? Well, ibuprofen can be real helpful. Mm-Hmm. Um, and it, and can be real fast at a relatively low dose, which is awesome. But one out of 10 individuals, according to recent studies, have shown that individuals will have gastric, uh, bleeding serious enough to give 'em the hospital if they take it for over 10 days, one out of 10 individuals. So most people take that stuff for chronic pain. Mm, pain you have a long term, probably not the the best thing. No, try something like the actual golden milk. That's one way of doing it. Okay? Another thing is something called buswell. Now this is really interesting. When it comes to inflammation, there's two different types of inflammation. One is cyclooxygenase. Sometimes people know them as Cox two inhibitors. Okay? That means it's, it's affecting, uh, uh, Cox or Cyclooxygenase. That's where they were using things like, um, uh, Celebrex and so on and so forth. Um, and, uh, and um, also things like, uh, uh, ibuprofen. These are all what you call, these are all non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, but they can form gastric bleeding. The second area is where the real bad pain comes in, where people use opiates, okay? And that's lip oxygenase or locks, LOX. Now, what can you use to be able to block that evil stuff? Because that's the bad pain, all right? And that's why people get addicted on this stuff. It's just like, oh, I'm finally outta relief, but now I have an addiction, okay? Yeah. Is something called boswellia, okay? Mm-Hmm. Boswellia Serrata, which is the genus and species of this. You can buy that in any whole, whole food store or something like that. Boswellia has been shown to block effectively Bach lip oxygenase, as well as Narcan, okay? Which is basically opium. Okay? So yes, once again, you have to use higher dosages like the turmeric, but boy oh boy, it can be helpful for blocking that as well. So there's a number of different choices. - Liquid, it's liquid form, right? - Um, it, it, it, um, uh, the VAs and the turmeric comes in powder form, liquid form, capsule form. Um, the absorption rates don't necessarily change on this. If you go with liquid form, it's the actual, what you have added to in turmeric, it should be bio parin or black pepper. And Boswellia seems to have the same absorption rates no matter how you handle it. So that, that's good. But some of 'em, yeah, it's better to do liquid most de - That's really, really fascinating and interesting because I actually am allergic to ibuprofen. My, I - Freak out. Oh my. Ouch. Yeah. - So I don't actually take any of that, so I always looking for an alternative. - There we go. It's going, it is going on. A little bit of a golden milk excursion with you, and you'll check back in. - I have some of that at home. , - What'd - You say? I do have some of that. - Then start - Using it. Have golden milk, and I do have the boswalia here - At Golden Milk with Boswellia, the company that I used to work with, okay. Which was one of the leaders in the field of doing research that's published in peer review journals on its supplements where other people just don't. Um, they combined a, a turmeric with Boswell, and the formula was very, very helpful. So if you take some bo with your golden milk, let's see how you do. - I won't try that. There - We go. There we go. - When we're talking about intestinal health, you had mentioned there is a simple visual stool analysis anyone could do to understand what's going on in your intestines and provide a powerful natural solution for your digestive health challenges. Can you tell us more about that? - Ooh, I love that one because it really empowers people. Mm-Hmm, , it's a great screening, cool tool. Is it a total diagnostic? No, but boy, oh boy, it nails it about 80 to 90% of the time, and it was taught to me by a naturopathic doctor about 25 years ago. And ever since then, I've been like, wow, I'll tell everybody. So basically speaking, there's a couple of different parameters. The first thing is everybody, or most everybody looks down at, you know, their, their, their, their prize that they gave to the world after they're done in, in, uh, uh, fecal matter. And they look down there and you go, Hmm, but they don't know what they're looking at. So let's give you some insights on here. If the actual stool itself is anywhere between light brown all the way up to yellowish, okay, then that means you don't have enough good bacteria in your intestines. Why do I say that? Because if, uh, what happens is your bile that dumps through gallbladder into your digestive tract up by your small intestines, okay? On the train towards making poop, all right? That bile is yellowish and it's also a little bit greenish. Alright? What, what makes a healthy poop not be yellowish? And greenish is the good bacteria that eats away at that bolus of food as it's going down. Mm-Hmm, . And that makes a medium brown to darker brown. All right? So if you have a situation where you don't have good bacteria, it's time to take a probiotic. Alright? So get yourself a probiotic with between six and eight different strains in it. Make sure it's refrigerated and take it and enjoy yourself. If that is your case, if it's coming out black as tar, get yourself a full physical, because there may be some things going on within the gastrointestinal tract, including bleeding or other types of things that you wanna have looked into by your physician. But most cases it's either light brown or dark to medium brown. You want to go for dark to medium brown. If it's light brown, get a probiotic. The second thing you want to be able to take a look at is how many chunks does it come out in? Oh my goodness. We're getting at the chunks now. Oh, all right. Well, if you hang around with enough functional medicine people, you're gonna end up talking about poop. Just get used to it. So the situation is and I'm on the Gutsy Bay Podcast show. So we exactly. - We're, we're all about the healthy poop - . There you go. Let's do something good today. Every morning. All right, so the situation is, is that how many chunks does it come outta? If it comes out in one or two chunks, that's fine. Okay? But it comes out in multiple chunks, or worse yet in just so many chunks. It's like more towards the loose side. That is a sign that you're not breaking down your food in your upper digestive tract, your stomach and small intestines. Mm-Hmm, . So you need more enzymes. So if you have more than two chunks, take yourself some digestive enzymes. Here's a little insight for you. You wanna take all digestive enzymes before you start the meal, right? Beforehand. 'cause you want your gastrointestinal tract to be coated with the enzymes as the food's going down there. Alright? So take a look. You got more than two pieces there. It's time for zi enzymes. Mm-Hmm, . The next thing is, is talking about fiber. I mean, a lot of people really just don't have a good quality amount of fiber in their diet, even vegetables. And, and, and pooping is an issue in the United States as you know quite well. Exactly. There you go. So the situation is, is if an individual doesn't have enough fiber in their system, the bulking and a lot of people will take fiber for constipation, that can make it worse. Okay? But if they don't have enough fiber in their system, what they'll find out is that their, what you're called, that their poops, okay? The best are not thick enough. So the best way is to be able to take your middle finger, your forefinger, and the the finger that's between your forefinger and your pinky finger. Like, like take all three of them and you wanna 'em put 'em together like this. And you wanna put a ring around it like this, all the way up above the knuckle, then pull out the ring. And that's how wide your poof is healthy, okay? It's actually, it's actually a test for sphincter ter expansion, but it also gives you a healthy with a poop. If you find it's thinner than that, take some fiber, aren't it? If you find it's thicker than that, get to the bathroom, more open. Stop holding often. Stop holding it in . You know, we're the, we're the only creatures in the world that hold it in. Everybody else is standing there going, whoa, it's time to go. Bye-Bye. What do bears do in the wood? Yeah, that's what I'm doing. All right, - . - Alright. So, but we stand around going, I still have to finish this report, so I'm gonna damage my intestines. Here we go. We don't want that. No one wants that. So that's another area. So the last area is, does your poop sink or float? Okay? Mm-Hmm, , you want it to sink. You don't want it to float. Why? Mm-Hmm, . Well, a byproduct of bad bacteria in your intestines is the production of different types of petrifying gases. But if you take poop and you imbue it with all these gases, it tends to float. So what you wanna do is you wanna look at that and go, Hmm, maybe I need to kill off some bad things in there. Alright? And there's some great approaches that you can do that with. One of two of my favorites are berberine, which tends to feed good bacteria and inhibit bad bacteria. And then the second thing that ber and berberine does a lot of different things. Some people even call it today's oz, uh, natural ozempic. I'm like, well, that's a lot of plain, but whatever. Um, but, but either berberine sulfate or you wanna be able to possibly use something called red thyme oil. Okay? A lot of people have heard of oregano oil and oregano oil has an ability to be able to kill up parasites and yeast and things like that in the gastrointestinal tract. Yeah. Because it contains an active ingredient known as thymol in it. But if you wanna be able to get a thymol powerhouse, you get red thyme oil with five to six times as much concentrated thymol in there as, as, uh, oreg oil. Oh my god. Works really well. Take some berberine along with some of the, uh, red thyme oil. And if you find yourself in that situation with a bunch of floaty poop, let's sink those battleships - . - Okay? So that's my answer to that system. And, uh, it, it's, it's, it's, it's got a good track record to it. So I'm, - That's a lot of valuable information. Gut health, that's what we're all about. If you could recommend just three lifestyle changes that would make the biggest impact on a person's overall health, what would that be? - Hydration number one. Yes. There's this, there's this book. There's this book, I forgot the darn name of it, but it was by this Iranian doctor. So he is a Persian doctor, and during the Iran Iraq wars, he, he didn't have any more medicine, so he treated people with different amounts of water. 'cause hydration is so prevalent, um, throughout the world and many times you are dehydrated before you even get thirsty. Okay? Yeah. Um, uh, uh, but it was even horrible in those desert countries. You know what I mean? Mm-Hmm. . So hydration has a therapeutic effect to, its amazing. I highly recommend an individual looks at their weight. Let's say a person man weighs 200 pounds. Okay? Then you take that number 200 cut in half and then do it in ounces. So that person should be taking a hundred ounces a day. You do that for a week or two, your body starts feeling a bit different. Things start feeling a bit better. Things work better. Okay? So - Are you constantly having to pee? - Ah, this is interesting. Having to pee is very, very interesting because having to pee comes from a couple of different reasons. And in America today, it's not the reason that you think, the reason that we're thinking is because I took in a lot of water, I'm gonna have to pee a lot, right? Yeah. Yeah. The real reason that pops up a lot is blood sugar imbalance. That's why they say as one of the tests for individuals who either have pre-diabetes or diabetes, how often do you pee? Okay? And those individuals are peeing, uh, like between four and 10 times a day. But people who have really good balanced blood sugar, even if they take in a lot of water itself, they're peeing between two and three times a day. Okay? So the body's trying to get rid of the extra sugar in the blood by peeing it out. Because before pee was pee, it was blood, okay? Pee is filtered blood, that's what your kidneys do. All right? - Alright. So it's the blood sugar - Levels. And also, do you know what diabetes stands for in Latin sweet urine? - Wow. - Because the doctors, before we had our, had our fancy machines used to take and put the tester stick in there and put in their mouth to taste it strangely enough. And if it was sweet, then they had diabetes. So hydration would be number one. Number two on this would be getting enough sleep. Really follow some of that sleep hygiene I was talking about before. Yeah. Really, really, really, really huge. Okay. Yeah. And, and the last thing is, is watch out for the amount of carbs in your diet. Oh my goodness gracious. There's so many people out there who have so many carbs that they're taking in and their blood sugar. The reason why diabetes is growing by double digit numbers many years is because we as a society put sugar into everything. Okay? Best way to control sugar, start cooking your own darn meals, - , - And you know what's in it. - It's - True. So those are my top three. I'll standing by 'em. - Those are great tips. There you go. Great, great tips. So thank you for that. - You're quite welcome. - So going back to the intestinal health real quick, Uhhuh, um, which you shared was very, very valuable, very valuable information. Oh, - So thank you. Input. - Mm-Hmm. Um, but when people have diarrhea, right? That I believe is a form of dehydration. Um, - It can be dehydrating. Yeah. It, - It's constipation regardless. So I think when you are constipated, not going to the bathroom, and if you have the opposite effect, it's diarrhea, that is a form of constipation. Mm-Hmm. , can you explain the differences of someone with constipation versus someone with diarrhea? - Okay. So basically what it is, is it's usually the triggers. Okay? Mm-Hmm. , classically diarrhea is when something gets into your gastrointestinal tract. Mm-hmm. . And especially around the lower part of your small intestines, and then all the rest of your large intestines, your bowel. Mm-Hmm. . If it's irritating, what happens is your body responds with, oh, let's wash that out of there. So it adds lots of water from your body, mostly taking it from blood, okay? Um, and, and it's not like it stays as blood. It comes in as a water. Okay? And it flushes out that area. And that is the classic reasoning for diarrhea. Constipation is a bit different, and constipation has a number of d different possible factors to it. First of all, I mean, one of the biggest issues that I see out there with constipation, and this is why Squatty potties work, is when it comes to the actual core strength of the average American, I, I'm sorry, we're really bad . - Yeah, no, it's true. - Yeah, we have hot, it's true. I mean, how do you expect to push out a poop if you don't have muscles to push? - Yeah, I recall in my twenties, my gastrologist that I needed to work on my core. Yeah. I'll do situps. . - Yeah, yeah, yeah. We also take in a lot of processed foods and the gut doesn't know how to deal with those. So they just sort of sit there and they slow down the transit time. They, they had this one horrible, um, uh, setting net live skit where, um, there was a man who was playing a, a, a, a big poppy who is a, who's the what called, who's a, always been a star for the Boston Red Sox, but he's also a bit of an entrepreneur, and he is like, sort of, you know, wild and crazy kind of guy. And he, he said, he said, I've got a new way to make sure your dog doesn't poop all, all over the house. And he says, what is it? He says, and he shows the product and he says, what's it made of? He says, cheese, just give 'em lots of cheese. And they only poop once a month, but it's a real big one. So when it comes down to it, there's things like processed things that just slow down you gastrointestinal tract. If you stand there and you get yourself more healthy natural foods, and it's gonna make it easy. And if you get caught and stuck in a situation where you're not pooping, you need to poop. Okay? It forms byproducts, which are to a certain degree poisonous to your body if you, if you don't deal with them, if you don't poop after a while, you can form mega colon, which requires resectioning of the bowel. Okay? All these horrible things. Go to EEZ natural health.com and buy some of this darn product I lit. Literally, it's so funny, I, I, I took some of it. I was like, oh, I want some of those. So I bought like a few bags of it from you, and you're like, okay, you know, you got a new shipment. And she's like, look at these new packages. I'm like, ah, that's great. I need to poop. So, so I kind of fum. I took one while I was in front of me. I was like, it was really tasty. I was like, okay, maybe I'll get addicted to this stuff, but whatever. Um, it, it was like, what was, what's the flavor raspberry? What is it? - It's, the name is Bora Bora Berry. So yes, - Raspberry Bora, bora Berry. For me, that was delicious. So I put it down, and then I just took the ride home, which was about 20 minutes away, and I literally said, you'd time to go to the bathroom. We're going to present a beautiful number of two for you. And I put one down. That was all of the different characteristics that I'd mentioned was a healthy poop. It was all there in one package 20 minutes after I took it. And it wasn't diarrhea. I wasn't forming de dehydration to diarrhea. - I recall that you sent me a text saying, this works. And I have to say it worked pretty quick for you because, uh, you know, every human body works differently and it's gonna work at a different time for every person. Uh, for me, I have to take it the night before . - And, and that's probably more often the case, but, but I was just like, instant magic. Thank you very much. You can take it every day. I was like, are you David Copperfield ? She's David Copperfield of the Poop Group. - Yes. It, it's all safe, natural ingredients that could just help, also helps your immune system, which is - God bless, because 70% of our immune system is in our gastrointestinal tract. And if you keep things moving down there, it keeps healthier. - Exactly. Exactly. - Rock it rocket. - Oh my goodness. Adam, you've been amazing. You've shared a wealth of information with us today. I just wanna say thank you for sharing your knowledge with us, and I look forward to having you back sometime. - That sounds marvelous. I am here at your disposal, just waiting and willing. - . Well, thank you. Thank you, thank you. Well, that's it for this episode of the Gutsy Babe Podcast. I am Liz Hall wishing you a week of empowerment and gutsy experiences with Lebanese. - Is it hard to go when you are on the go? Well, you're not alone travelers. Constipation affects millions daily. Don't let irregularity ruin your next trip. Try travel Ease, especially formulated to keep you going on your next vacation or business trip. Unlike common over the counter therapies for constipation, travel ease is all natural, doesn't produce cramping and won't dehydrate. You wanna find out more? Go to easy natural health.com. That's ee ZE natural health.com.