Taming Inflammation through Food Choices

The heart beats about 103,680 times. Pumping blood through 60,000 miles of blood vessels. First off, what have we done for our heart lately? And 13,680 times. Do a little clicking pen one day. 103,680 times. I think my thumb would say, "I'm not showing up tomorrow." Welcome to Health Breakthroughs with Dr. Stangler. I'm Dr. from Art Stangler. And each episode, we cut through the noise to bring you practical sciencebacked insights for more energy, [music] better health, and a life that feels like yours again. Hey everybody, so good to be with you. I'm with my friend Dr. Chris Molus. Boy, he's been in medicine for many, many years. I'll let him describe that well over 25 years because I've been in medicine over 25 years and he's been practicing longer than I have. an author. He's an educator for doctors uh for the public. I know he's also an educator for Vatellio Clinics at vatelliohealth.com. But Dr. Molita, it's great to have you on the show. We're going to talk about debt health and inflammation and that connection between the two. But before we get into into it, tell us more about yourself. You got quite a background, written many books. I know I do want to hear about a few of your awards, which unless I push on it, you're not going to let the audience know about them, but please go ahead. Well, thank you. So, yeah, my journey into naturopathic medicine. I'm a naturopathic doctor for 30 almost 32 years. I graduated 1992. So, I think that means something. If practice makes perfect, I'm either getting perfect or I'm getting old or perfectly old. So, I'm not sure how that all works. You know, I'm now full of more dad jokes than I used to be full of. And that's of course for people that know about dad jokes. It happens with age. I've been in practice a long time. I've written a total of 18 books. book kind of my 19th book, a second edition of fertility. And it's interesting as we look at gut health, which we'll talk about today, and we look at human fertility, fertility levels are dropping precipitously. And if it was if we were any other species, we like, well, okay, outcomes with autism are of course very pronounced. Fertility levels are dropping and we'd probably be on a watch or not an endangered list. Clearly not an endanger, but clearly a watch list. There's something going on. And I know I was back to our topic of the day of food and so forth. My most recent book was called the MMM theory which is a microbial multial millu. And that sounds like well that's a perfect conversation for the gut and it is but I also in that book speak about the skin microbiome brain microbiome microbiome of the bloodstream the uterus the bladder the prostate and they just recently found that in the semen you there's actually a change in the microbiot and microbiome of the seinal vesicles altering fertility like who's working for who are we working for the bacteria the bacteria were working for us. They were working together. Yeah. Yeah. No, you're right. And so there's this pronounced gut body connection. Basically, every organ cell in the body, there's connection. Tell us a bit more. You people hear about the term inflammation. They kind of get a sense, you know, pain, aching, maybe fever and all that. Maybe tell the viewers a bit more about inflammation is. And then let's get into the gut. And I do want to hear more about your new book and and some of that newer research because sounds like you've taken the microbiome connection uh to another level. But yeah, go ahead. Well, so a term that you and I both know came out of Europe, the term inflammaging and now of course is very pervasive. So, so the more inflammation we have whether it be gut related elsewhere in our body, it's an aggregate and I often you and I will measure a C reactive protein or a said raid or interuc. But if you add up all the inflammation like we add up all the microbiomes, we start looking at well what's the total burden and we all have a genetic susceptibility. We're prone to certain things genetically. There's epigenetics, the diet, lifestyle, things like inflammation and stress which will contribute to inflammation. So inflammation affects how well our skin's aging, how well our brain is doing, and just every little bit and part of our at least 37. We've done [music] everything you were told to do and something still feels off. Health breakthroughs with Dr. Stangler. We go beyond symptom management to explore integrative sciencebacked approaches to the issues [music] that medicine too often overlooks. Chronic fatigue, brain fog, gut dysfunction, inflammation, hormone imbalance, and healthy aging. If you're ready for real answers and practical tools to support your [music] health naturally, follow health breakthroughs with Dr. Stangler on Dr. Talks or wherever you listen to podcasts. You know, a lot of people are always concerned about inflammation and heart disease. Maybe talk about more how that inflammation kind of arises if you originates from the gut. What's going on in the gut that's conti contributing inflammation you know in the cardiovascular system other regions of the body? Yeah certainly. So other than our necessitated act of breathing because trying not to breathe usually doesn't work well out for people long term. We have to eat. So got to breathe. Okay. Well, we're getting lots of toxins and pollutants in. We're also getting oxygen which oxygen is reactive oxygen species ROS's. So just the active breathing or doing aerobic exercise which we tell our all our patients exercise well that's causing damage but now we're eating the outside world and allowing the outside world into our body. And of course that's once again try to live a long time without breathing doesn't work. Try to live a long time without eating doesn't work. kind of like the basics. You can see why after 32 years I was still practicing to um figure this out. And the concept is what are we eating? Natural foods, processed foods. And our grandparents or our great grandparents and wherever we all originally came from, whatever country, their lands were by nature organic 200 years ago. There wasn't a better living through chemistry. There wasn't Roundup. there wasn't the herbicide and pesticides that we use today. And so every time we're eating, we're poisoning our microbiome and that's altering the inflammation of our gut. And you and I measure this on our stool test. Secrettory IgA, calin, lactoerin. We're looking for those things or maybe eocinophil protein. All fancy words, but they're all pointing towards an inflammatory process. But now we're feeding our little microbiome like little pack men and pack women and they eat like little fledgling birds when mother bird rings a worm while they're eating when we're eating. And depending on how well we're feeding them, they also will contribute to either a nice tight junction so we don't have leaky gut as much or they'll contribute to a pro-inflammatory thing. But we're just throwing a lot of junk in. And I told my patients, we're more aware of which gas station should we stop at to fill our car. Like, well, that's off brandand. I don't know whether I put off brandand in my car. So, an awfully important big investment, but you can trade a car in. You can't trade the body in not yet at least. Yeah. And so, what's the degradation that's happening? Let's say someone has inflammation. It probably part of it or a lot of it's arising in the gut. What's happening to the body? What's happening with this inflammation? say the blood vessels or you know other the brain the other organs of the body what's what's going on with this inflammation well the inflammation and you mentioned the heart and I want to do a shout out to one of our now past colleagues a medical doctor Steven Sinatra and Steven Sinatra had written a book about the cholesterol myth and he was a cardiologist MD cardiologist but on the functional holistic side and he says inflammation we want to be looking at and we know that inflammation damages not only the endothelia and when I graduated we thought of the lining or our blood vessels like a nonstick frying pan and it's like as long as you don't scratch the coating off you're fine well now we know of course the coating of not many non-stick pans are toxic that's a whole another conversation but now we know within the blood vessels there's something called the glycoalix and if anybody wants to look at the word glycoalis or look at images it looks like we have fur at the electron microscope level within our blood vessels. So, it's not so much smoothing anymore. We got this glycopixel. But what the inflammation is doing is damaging the analothelia, damaging the glycopix, and of course damaging our hearts. On a daily basis, the heart beats about 103,680 times, pumping blood through 60,000 miles of blood vessels. First off, what have we done for our heart lately? And 13,680 times. Do a little clicking pen one day. 103,680 times. I think my thumb would say I'm not showing up tomorrow. Thank goodness our heart does. So what it does is actually damage those tissues and also inflammation accelerates certain pro-inflammatory things that causes clots and platelet aggregation. So we increase our chance for stroke and heart attack. Our 60,000 miles of blood vessels become more restrictive. And with inflammation, it's a physiological stressor. So it's great increase blood pressure, but it's also changing our brain and our whole neurochemistry as well all at once. So multiple pathways. So the key is what can we do to quiet it? And I was just reading an article the other day about butyrate and how butyrate, which is in our gut, which you and I often will measure in a stool test, which I encourage people get a stool test done. Get a stool test and see what's your butyrate levels. Where are your friendly bacteria working for you or not? Because if your guts are healthy, so are you. And Hypocrates 400 BC said, and I I think he probably should attribute to his wife, but it's attributed to him. Well, food is medicine. He probably came home one day walking along the Mediterranean. I'm a Greek, so I can appreciate warm, hot environment. He's so tired. My body hurts. And his wife said, "Here's some food. It's good for you." He says, "Oh, food is medicine." Okay. And then he said one day he probably came home and he says, "My tummy hurts." He says she probably gave him an herb and said, "Here, try this." Oh, okay. Well, food is medicine. Medicine is your food and all disease begins in the gut. I mean, you have to wonder how did he ponder all this by himself? Of course, maybe there's a voice in his head, but it's like, hm, so we want to eat well, but one of the things we're talking about today is gut health. So, friendly bacteria, but do we overwash our hands? Do we underwash our hands? And when we all go out to eat and we go to an Italian restaurant or Hispanically influenced restaurant and they offer you those chips or that extra loaf of bread, not only are they processed and of course we're feeding ourselves, which of course we worry about obesity and but we're also saying okay well they just clean somebody else's table and the dilemma of well our microbiome came from you know we're vaginally born. We get a lot of microbial exposure through a vaginal birth versus a c-section. Lots of health issues there. But it's also intriguing to look at the fact that we are eating continuously other microbiota, other bacteria and parasites potentially and other things based on how well somebody else has washed their hands. And so it's called fecal oral. And I in case someone's going to eat lunch or dinner right before this, I'm not going to go any further. Hey everybody, I want to take just a quick moment and invite you to my website drstangler.com. Here we have the supplements that we've [music] been using with our patients for many, many years. High quality and high potency supplements, very pure. So, if you're looking for highquality supplements where you can notice a difference both in how you feel and on your lab tests, [music] go to our website at drstangler.com. Yes, very true. So, when you have your patients, obviously, let's say they got chronic joint pain, they've got autoimmune disease, they've got heart disease, they've got cancer, whatever is going on, uh you're going to pay attention to the gut. You often run a stool test. It's like a functional stool test. It's not the typical stool test when you go to your, you know, regular medical doctor and they're not running these types of tests. This is giving you a lot more information. The microbiome, uh, more in-depth analysis of the bacteria and the parasites and how you're breaking food down and all that. So it gives you a lot more information. So this is always a basis of how you're addressing this inflammation that's going on their body. Maybe just walk us through that bit like with a patient whatever you know type of chronic inflammation they have. Maybe just walk us through. You're going to do the diet maybe some other analysis supplements. Tell us kind of what you typically do with patients. Well um routinely I'll do a stool test. Like you said it's a functional stool test. It's not the kind we just measure, hey do you have blood in your stool and so forth. It measures for that as well. But what it does is we're looking for how well have we fed our critters. Which critters have came into our neighborhood? Are they friendly neighbors or those neighbors like I hope I don't run into them at the mailbox? And then we look at diet relative to how are we fueling ourselves? Are we eating our five to seven fruits and vegetables a day, ideally fresh? And we know for an audience probably does to a large degree there's the dirty dozen foods and there's the 15 clean foods. And that's actually a categorization done by the environmental working group ewg.org. So just call the dirty dozen. You Google it and you say if you can't buy these organic looks we all have a limited budget and welcome to the world of inflation. So but then there's a 15 clean okay you're pretty good but if you buy those produce that way but like strawberries spinach if you can't buy them organic you probably shouldn't be eating them. So once again you're eating them and we are what we eat from our head to our feet but we're also feeding our critters down there. um appears to be the microbiome. So then what I do is I want to make sure everybody's having two to three bowel movements a day and that's where my patients go like what who does that? I said well healthy people and then then it's like okay well then they're probably thinking well does he go that often at tmi and so the answer is we want to have a babbling brook and not a stagnant pond. And you and I use in our practice the concept of the Bristol B R I S T O L stool chart. Well, everybody wants to look up Bristol Steel Charter if you're not familiar with it. And you want to be a pretty much a for a Costco hot dog. And I'm not picking on Costco. Armor hammer or uh ballpark Frank or whatever. You want to be a Costco hot dog. If you're wet and you have very loose stools, we know where the moisture goes. All the toxins but lots of nutrients go that direction and you become malnourished with diarrhea. But then I say, "Well, what happens if you have a one, two, or three in a bristle stool chart?" And they say, "I don't Oh, and I'm working here with Nike and Intel executives and other employees. Bright people. Bright people. They said, "I have no idea why I'm in moisture." Well, I said, "You're reabsorbing money." And I said, "I'm being cut." And you wonder why you're feeling poopy, pun intended. And so, we want to make sure we have a babbling brook. We're feeding our microbiome. We got our fiber. And then what we want to do is we want to look at mindful eating. And virtually every culture around the world has an attitude of gratitude around food. So they'll either say a little mindful prayer or a something about thank you for you know the deer that gives us life or thank you for the plants or the trees or from a Judeo-Christian perspective we say you know bless this food into my body. We often get so stuck as professionals and just busy moms, dads scooping our food in without the attitude of gratitude. And back to that gas station analogy, fast food is a not fast. You can sit online for a very long time. And B, it's not it's a fast way only to be ill health. And so sometimes you catch this catch can, but not mindful prepared with love. And I think we've all heard that saying, I could taste the love. So your wife or your significant other or your grandma makes some food or you make the food for the family yourselves, you and I, we barbecue something and there's like why it tastes a lot. It's nothing is as good as grandma's cookies or you know some other things. So I think that's important. So balance great hydration cuz once again we're not hydrated. We're once again a stagnant pond like a cesspool. Then we want to make sure we're doing some good probiotic fiber inducing things to help with butyrate levels. And I recommend a stool test for people because that's very very important. It's going to tie into another thing we probably will chat about today which is we were talking about the Greek Hypocrates and food is your medicine. All disease begins in the gut. But then there's lucriticus which is a Roman philosopher that said what is food for one is poison for another. Yeah. And that's a very compelling point. So I want to make sure they got great gut. They're really mindful. And if your tummy is ever talking to you, whether it be upper stomach, like a gastric ulcer, gastritis, taking too much non-sterical anti-inflammatories, well, of course you want to get checked out. If your lower GI tract, some 25 ft of intestine are complaining or you're blowing or distended, that's a wakeup call to say things aren't working so well down there. And you know, if it was our house, we'd call Rotorooer. So we don't want to necessarily recommend Rotorooer for the body. And I'm not, by the way, but we wanted to kind of say, okay, we need to get things tended to. And the best thing to do is have knowledge and doing a test is very important. And there's a way to do that just as a consumer. As a consumer, you can go like say to a company I work with. I have no ownership of it. And you can order a functional test that you and I order normally. Of course, it's always best to work with a functional medicine provider that will actually look into the nuances of things, but the report's really nice and the very insights only gives us. Yeah. Well, that's a very very good basis and we're going to do another session with you another time on the connection of food sensitivities and gut health because a lot of people are interested in that subject and you how to test for it, how to deal with it, how to improve them, all those types of things. So, that's great. So, maybe in just an ending any any I know it depends what's going on with the person or testing all that. What are some of your favorite supplements in terms of gut health? Um, just kind of a general sense you see work pretty well consistently for people. So assuming there's not a stomach ulcer or dad no small intestine ulcer. I'm big on digestive enzymes. There's a saying that I came up with when I gave a lecture 25 years ago at a whole food international retreat and these are hard for raw foodist. I mean they'll eat raw meat. I mean everything is raw in their life and I I'm not recommending that either in terms of the raw meat but live food for living people, dead food for dying people. The more vitality you have, the better because a lot of our foods are processed and we are a catchy as catch can help skelter world digestive enzymes um very important and if you have a dairy wheat issue then of course there's ones that have DPP4 in it which is helping with caseine and gluten but then I like elutamine I like butyrate in fact I got my butyrate right here in front of me butyrate is supportive for the gut healths at the right level with obesity and at the same time. It also helps with brain function and so the leaky gut, leaky brain and so many people post the last three years of what we I will turn the co era have brain fog. They have other issues yet okay well not only were we stressing where's our adrenal glands but where's our gut where's our health in all of this and we also were sequestered. So we weren't eating and we weren't socializing we weren't doing all that. So I'm big on glutamine instead of glucosamine of course probiotic the butyric acid which you can also find in clarified butter and organic butter ideally. So these are my big ones. Of course we can go into nuances of how to kill critters but we really once again you want to test and there are on the like the tests that health offers. Again I'm not pitching them. They're just an example of one of the big labs out there that offer these things. their resource, but it actually has a category for pro-inflammatory and autoimmune bacteria. And so it's like, hm, wouldn't that be nice to know, do I have something in that category of pro-inflammatory or autoimmune? And that's just, yeah, we definitely want to know. Oh, those are great recommendations. And yeah, I'll look forward to talking to you in another interview on food sensitivities that the viewers will want to watch. So, Dr. Mus, thank you so much for your time today. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to Health Breakthroughs with Dr. Stangler. If today's [music] episode resonated with you, please follow the show, share with someone who needs it, and leave a review. It helps [music] more people find us. For more resources and wellness support, visit drstangler.com.

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