Biohack Your Gut & Restore Your Microbiome For Ultimate Wellness

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:00:00]:
People don’t realize that you don’t have to have any gut symptoms. Your poops might look normal, you could still have a parasite, and what you’re experiencing in your body could still be triggered by something in your gut, even if you feel fine in your gut.

Nick Urban [00:00:13]:
You’re listening to High Performance Longevity. The show exploring a better path to optimal health for those daring to live as an outlier in a world of averages. I’m your host, Nick Urban, bioharmonizer, performance coach, and lifelong student of both modern science and ancestral wisdom. Each week we decode the tools, tactics and timeless principles to help you optimize your mind, body and performance span. Things you won’t find on Google or in your AI tool of choice. From cutting edge biohacks to grounded lifestyle practices, you’ll walk away with actionable insights to look, feel and perform at your best across all of life’s domains. Welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:01:04]:
It’s so great to be here, especially after having hung out with you at Dave Asprey’s biohacking conference. It’s great to get to know you better and just excited for the conversation we’re about to have.

Nick Urban [00:01:21]:
Yeah. For some context, we first were both part of a Biohackers New York City WhatsApp group for a very long time. We talked about it podcast a while back, months ago, and then we met initially at the Health Optimization Summit here in Austin, just briefly, and I got to hang out a little more at the biohacking conference. And so this conversation has been a long time in the making and I think a fascinating place to begin it today was will be with in relation to an attendee that we both met over lunch one day. We don’t need to go into any specifics of their condition, but I know they mentioned they had gangrene and then as a result of that, of course they were pumped full of antibiotics and all kinds of substances that wreaked havoc on their gut microbiome. And since you have a lot of experience in that arena, you’re like the Sherlock Holmes of the gut. Where exactly would you begin for someone who has had a lot of exposure to antibiotics, either in childhood or even later in life? Yeah.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:02:31]:
And just to add a really important small detail in in that story of the gangrene, the the person who had it had had an infection or was told that he hadn’t been infected with E. Coli. And probably a lot of people hear about E. Coli, like every once in a while there is E. Coli contamination in food. We just had a report now of cucumbers being contaminated with salmonella, interestingly, from the same supplier as a prior outbreak of some other contamination. But it’s the reason that it’s super important to understand that it’s E. Coli.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:03:14]:
And the worst one that probably people have heard, like some years ago there was E. Coli O1,5 7. It can cause internal hemorrhage. It is very invasive. It’s very destructive to the gut lining. But E. Coli, shigella, Salmonella, and campylobacter. Campylobacter being one of the most common causes of food poisoning worldwide.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:03:37]:
Like when people are traveling in other countries and get a traveler’s diarrhea, A lot of times it’s campylobacter. It could otherwise be E. Coli. But these bacteria have one thing in common. They all produce something called cytolethal distending toxin. And that sounds kind of pretty scary, right? Like cytolethal distending toxin. Like, what the f is that? It basically goes into your cells and attacks the cellular structures. So the scaffolding that holds the cell together as well as the.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:04:17]:
The tight junctions that hold the cells of the intestines together, and it starts to break up those tight junctions and causes leaky gut. Now, the interesting thing is that discovering the cytolithal descending toxin led to realizing that all IBS is not just some functional disorder of the gut, but actually can be an autoimmune disorder. And I bet you’ve never heard that before that IBS could be autoimmune. People who have been exposed to something like an E. Coli salmonella campyctor can also, as a result of having been exposed to this cytolithal distending toxin, can develop antibodies to one of the settler structure proteins, that’s called vinculin. And so then they develop an autoimmune attack on the cells that are lining the intestines. And so for years, we thought that all IBS was this functional disorder of the gut. And yet there’s a lot of cases of IBS that start after a food poisoning and can actually turn into an autoimmune condition of the gut, along with having increased gut permeability while potentially having normal zonulin levels.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:05:43]:
Because if you’re. If you follow the gut, you know, you know a couple of terms, super important ones like endotoxin, zonulin. Zonulin is like the dimmer switch that controls intestinal permeability. But zonulin is tricky because you can have an elevated zonulin in a stool test, or you cannot. It doesn’t. If it’s not elevated, it doesn’t mean you don’t have leaky gut. Or you can find elevated zonulin in a blood test, or you can find anti zonulin antibodies as well in a blood test, which we think is because there’s been enough gut permeability and leakiness. Zonulin levels are super high.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:06:26]:
They lead to antibodies, but you can also get increased gut permeability. And we can talk about why all of this is important with cytolephal distending toxin. So I’m just tying it back to the case of the, of the person with the, the gangrene, because they actually had said that they were diagnosed with E. Coli. I asked them, well, Was it an O157? They didn’t know. But the unique thing about E. Coli and what makes it particularly dangerous and that it can cause chronic inflammatory health conditions that can go on for years afterwards, it’s because of this cytolethal distending toxin. But anytime someone is exposed to antibiotics, their gut permeability increases, and it can increase within the first 24 hours after taking a dose of antibiotics.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:07:16]:
They’ve looked at this in studies with rodents where they give them antibiotics, and then they look at the tight junctions, and they see that the tight junctions actually start to dismantle within 24 hours of the first dose of an antibiotic. Now, the, the mechanism for that could be various. Like, you know, when you’re, you’re giving someone an antibiotic, it’s killing off both good and bad bugs. And we know that the good bugs that line the intestines are keeping that border intact, so they’re helping our body. So almost like a hormetic stressor within our own gut, right? The good, the good bugs are providing the right type of stress that keeps our immune system in balance and keeps those tight junctions tight. The bad bugs, they do the opposite. They cause too much stress on the system. The system starts to break down.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:08:14]:
So anybody that’s been on antibiotics, especially anybody who’s been on antibiotics for extended periods of time, and this also includes people who have been on intravenous antibiotics at the hospital, because it turns out that intravenous antibiotics, even though they’re getting metabolized by the liver, what they found is that the metabolites that are usually secreted in the bile, so the liver metabolizes drugs, hormones, all those things, and then their metabolites get packaged into our bile. And when you eat a fatty meal, the gallbladder squeezes and releases the bile, along with those now water soluble toxins that have been put into the bile. Well, it turns out that the metabolites from a lot of intravenous antibiotics are still metabolically active. And even though they were given intravenously, they’re going to mess up the gut and they’re going to cause what we call dysbiosis imbalance between good and bad bugs because they’re killing off both the good and the bad. And then once you have a dysbiosis, it’s the domino that tips, the gut permeability domino and then you get leaky gut. So anybody who’s been on antibiotics, to go back to the, the beginning of your question, has to be put on a whole protocol to restore the gut. And depending on how dysfunctional their gut has become, that protocol is going to be a bit more complex or less complex. But one thing that we know from studies is that because a lot of people ask like, well, if you know you’re going to go on antibiotics, so if you’re going to go, if you’re going to have a, a tooth extracted, you’ve got a tooth infection, whatever it is, then you know you have to be treated with antibiotics.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:10:04]:
Does it make sense to take probiotics while you take the antibiotics versus take the course of antibiotics and then wait till it’s done and then take the probiotic afterwards? And they actually found that taking the probiotic while you’re on antibiotics speeds up the recovery of the gut.

Nick Urban [00:10:26]:
Does it matter what strain or what type of probiotic or postbiotic or any of that stuff? Or is it really just broadly beneficial?

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:10:34]:
You want to, you’re going to want to take a multi strain probiotic. And again, this gets very nuanced because it depends on the patient and what their gut can tolerate. But generally you’re going to want to take a probiotic that has probably like 10 strains, including multiple different strains of lactobacilli, as well as multiple different strains of bifidobacteria, along with maybe strep thermophilus and Saccharomyces boulardii. A lot of times, like if I have a patient that I know is going to be on antibiotics or is going to be on antibiotics for extended periods of time because they’ve got Lyme disease or whatever it may be that they need to take antibiotics for, I will always put them on Saccharomyces boulardii, which is a yeast. It’s favorable. Yeast stimulates secretory IGA production, which also helps to protect the gut lining and helps to restore or also protect the gut lining from the effects of the antibiotics. But that’s basically what I part of the inspiration for my first book, Happy Gut came from my own experiences having pediatricians destroy my gut flora. Prescribing like two to three rounds of antibiotics every year as if it’s just like yeah, you have an infection, just take a more antibiotics from.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:12:02]:
I calculated from the age of 10 to 19 that I was on 20 plus rounds of antibiotics. Yeah, this was like 80s, 90s, like taking antibiotic was just normalized. You’re sick, take an antibiotic, it’ll, you’ll get better.

Nick Urban [00:12:16]:
Are there any other big needle movers someone can introduce proactively if they know they’re going to be on a course? Like I think there’s something peptide called the razatitude lorazatide, maybe KPV as an anti inflammatory or perhaps outside of the peptide realm, lifestyle factors or anything.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:12:33]:
Yeah, I mean look, we know that people who eat fermented foods on a regular basis are gonna have a more resilient immune system, are gonna actually recover faster. Cause even with the Lorazatide KPB or the BPC157, the peptides which help to restore the tight junctions and repair the lining of the gut, they’re not really working at the level of the microbiome. And ultimately for everything to sustain you need a healthy gut microbiome. And what we’ve learned at least, you know, we don’t have a lot of studies on this because you know one, it’s not sexy to study fermented foods. You don’t make as much money off of a fermented food from as, as, as companies make from a pharmaceutical drug. Right. But there was a, a decent study, let’s call it decent study. It could have been done better done by Stanford University where they looked at the effects of a high fermented foods diet on the gut microbiome and on the immune system.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:13:39]:
And they found that a high fermented foods diet reduced 19 different inflammatory markers, including markers of cellular immune activation and that they increase microbial diversity in the gut. Once you have microbial diversity, then you’re going to have all the factors that are necessary to promote and keep a healthy gut lining and mucus layer. So but these peptides are, are super important. And you could think like yeah, theoretically it’s not the cheapest thing to do, but if you have the money to throw at it, you could go on a peptide if you know that you’re going to be on antibiotics because the antibiotics are going to mess up your tight junctions, at least temporarily. And depending on what your baseline gut health is, that antibiotic could be the last straw that tips the camel’s back and then put somebody into this chronic inflammatory state. Whereas they were fine before the antibiotics, but they really weren’t. It’s just they were teetering on the edge and it just took that one thing to put their body completely out of balance. Like the patient that I saw today that had a wisdom tooth extraction in September of last year and then developed a sinus infection after that.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:15:09]:
They found that one of the wisdom tooth in the upper jaw left the cavitation behind. They got infected, got into the sinus, treated the infection, patched up the cavitation, then got reinfected in December and then got reinfected again in April. So now this person is getting recurrent infections and it’s been, it’s a snowball effect. So sometimes you’re just teetering on the very edge and it could be because the gut microbiome is already so imbalanced that all you have to do is throw one thing at it and it sends the entire system out of whack.

Nick Urban [00:15:49]:
So when that happens, are you finding that either short or medium term, any particular restrictive diet or perhaps very inclusive diet is most helpful? Because I know a lot of people get pretty immediate symptom relief going on. Something like carnivore or keto temporarily, they work on addressing the dysbiosis, then all of a sudden they add in foods that previously made them feel terrible because of presumably endotoxin or something, and then they can tolerate a full omnivorous diet much better. What about during and around antibiotic use?

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:16:25]:
I mean, same thing again, depending on what the underlying issues are. Because for a lot of people, especially women, antibiotics gonna bring out underlying undiagnosed yeast overgrowth that’s just been kind of simmering under the surface. And all it takes is that one trigger the antibiotic and then suddenly the yeast. Basically when antibiotics, when someone who’s prone to yeast overgrowth, antibiotics come in and they clear the real estate and the yeast can move into that real estate very fast. So, yeah, like, I’ve actually found that people are suffering from severe bloating. And I can’t say this can be applied to every single case, but people who have been bloated, even with like a diagnosis of sibo, will do quite well on a carnivore diet. Take out all carbohydrates, take out vegetables that are not getting digested. Well, a lot of times these patients are like eating salads, but then seeing undigested pieces of their, their salad or their vegetables in their stool.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:17:34]:
Their, their guts cannot handle breaking down these foods because they don’t have the microbiome that is designed to help break down those foods. You know, like the hunter gatherers have microbiomes that can handle a lot more plant fiber and stuff than we can. So I do find that a carnivore diet in those instances can be quite helpful in healing the gut while you’re working on, you know, fixing the microbiome, improving the tight junctions, all of this, and it helps to get there faster.

Nick Urban [00:18:11]:
I know that some people with fodmap sensitivities or inability to tolerate certain carbohydrates and plants, for example, they like, do not do well on them. But then if you’re introducing say fermented vegetables into the diet, do you see that that tends to be an exception and it works okay for them, or should they consider first addressing the intolerance to those types of foods and then only then adding those back in it?

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:18:40]:
Okay, so a couple of things here, because when we’re talking about vegetables and if someone who’s not wants to live a carnivore lifestyle forever and wants to be able to incorporate vegetables back into the diet, it, I see it as a stepping stone. Because if you think about it, when, when vegetables have been fermented, it’s basically they have been partially digested. So it’s actually aiding in the digestive process and it’s also acidifying the foods, which a lot of times, like we use digested bitters and things like that to stimulate stomach acid production. So adding in some fermented foods as part of the meal can actually help stimulate your own digestive juices, your stomach acid production, and help you digest the food better. The thing is like, like anything, what people don’t realize is you think like, well, if a little’s good, a lot is better. And when it comes to fermented foods, you’ve got to kind of test it out because even in that Stanford study, which was a four week intensive study where they had people increase their intake of fermented foods to several cups per day, patients felt gassy, they felt bloated for the first couple of weeks and then things leveled out. Now that was part of a study, but if I put a patient on fermented foods diet and they get bloated and gassy, they’re going to be upset with me. And they’re not going to be happy.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:20:15]:
So what I always tell people is start slow. You’ve got to test it out. Because if your gut microbiome is disturbed, you’re putting in these good bacteria in there. They’re going to make things kind of wonky. And you know why? Because they’re working as micro, microbots. They’re like little nanobots that are going in there and they’re battling it out with the bad bugs and they’re trying to reclaim territory from those bugs. And during that initial time when that’s happening, yeah, you can have a bit more gas, you can have a bit more discomfort, but you can mitigate it by just taking a tinier dose and slowly working up like other things. Like you’re working up your tolerance.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:20:58]:
Like you wouldn’t go and run a marathon tomorrow if you haven’t trained a day in your life to run. You start with a shorter run, like half a mile, then a mile, then you work your way up. Same thing with a ferment. You, you want to work your way up.

Nick Urban [00:21:13]:
Yeah, okay. Yeah, that’s pretty simple. It makes logical sense to go that route. Also with the ferments, are there any particular types that are your go to’s? Because I had an idea. I forget where I got it from. I’m thinking from a different book that I previously read on probiotics and prebiotics and postbiotics and transbiotics and all these things. And I got the idea that a lot of the fermented products you get in the grocery store, especially commercial yogurts, are not going to have the necessary probiotic strains and dosages to get like a good therapeutic effect. But is it different for the fermented foods?

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:21:54]:
Look, if I can get a person to make their own ferment at home, that is the, the most ideal thing. And the top ferment to make would be a kefir. It’s super easy to make. It takes about 48 hours. You just have to find really good kefir grains and you’re going to get much higher counts of probiotic bacteria in a homemade kefir than you would ever find in any store bought brand. Second best. If they’re not going to do it at home because they just refuse, they’re not going to try to make their own ferments. Then getting a kefir that was made by a farm, like at the farmer’s market, like that’s as close to homemade as possible.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:22:42]:
It could be. A lot of times I have patients get goat Milk kefir because of the A2 casein in it. But you can also make kefir from A2 cow’s milk so it’ll be easier to digest with the easier to break down casein protein. But if not, then if you’re going to the supermarket, then plain kefir or drinkable yogurt. That’s where I would have people start. Yeah, there’s sauerkraut, there’s pickles. There’s a lot of other things. I would never have anybody start with a kombucha because there’s the scoby.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:23:20]:
The kombucha also has yeast. So anybody who has yeast issues, it’s not a good place to start. I’ve had a lot of success starting people at a low dose of kefir. I have them started a 1oz shot and then work their way up to several ounces per day. And that’s one of the things that I found that starts to move the needle in terms of gut diversity, which is one of the most important things that we should be aiming at. Because anybody who has been exposed to antibiotics, and I think almost anyone living on the planet right now who’s in westernized world is either probably exposed to antibiotics, exposed to pesticides, or to some other gut disruptor that has caused them to lose part of the diversity in their gut. And that diversity is key to a healthy gut lining and to keeping inflammation at check. So.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:24:15]:
So that’s what we should all be striving for.

Nick Urban [00:24:18]:
You mentioned that the key there, if you’re going to do it at home, which is top tier, is to start with a good kefir starter. Is there a brand or product or anything that you prefer that you have certified as Dr. Pedre approved?

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:24:35]:
I don’t have any financial ties to this, but one of the brands that I like is called Kombucha Mama. And she’s. She’s just basically dedicated her life to fermentation. And if you go on her website, you can find under her shop kefir grains.

Nick Urban [00:24:55]:
Okay. But to reiterate what you said, don’t actually start with the kombucha in a lot of cases because of the higher yeast content compared to kefir.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:25:05]:
Yeah, exactly. So if you go to Kombucha Mama, if you look in their shop, you can actually find. It’s a smaller section. She’s got kefir grains. Her biggest thing is the kombucha. But anybody that I’m doing gut restoration for, I. Especially if they have any yeast issues, I’ll I’ll go more for the kefir first. Eventually they can make their own kombucha, but you’ve got to do some gut healing before you can get there.

Nick Urban [00:25:30]:
Okay, what are the steps in your gut healing? Because I’m going to assume the first is to reseed the microbiome with the right strains and adding in diversity, food diversity, probiotic diversity, prebiotic diversity, that’ll all be helpful. And then also addressing the tight junctions through a bunch of different things, including perhaps peptides like lorazatide. What else would you do? Maybe adding in like a full vacuumic or something product to help work on that further. What would you add to your gut healing protocol stack?

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:26:03]:
So that goes back to my initial, my first book, Happy Gut, where I created the Gut Care program. Just cleanse, activate, restore and enhance. So actually one of the first steps is to take everything out of the way. That’s an obstacle to healing. And that means figuring out like, do you have a parasite, do you have dysbiosis, do you have yeast overgrowth? Because as long as any of that is in the way, it doesn’t matter how much lorazatide, kpv, all the things that you do, you can’t biohack out a parasite or some bad bug that’s living in your gut unless you use the right antimicrobial. And it has to be very specific to whatever it is. I’m doing gut testing and I’m diagnosing people with Giardia and entamoeba. All the time.

Nick Urban [00:26:59]:
You say all the time. That is a point of contention because I often hear the so called health authorities in the west saying that no one has like chronic low grade infections, no one has parasites in the developed world. None of these things are real issues. But I don’t really care so much what the health overlords say. I care about the boots on the street, what people are actually seeing in clinic. And when you say a lot of people is that like 10%, 30%, 75%.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:27:25]:
Well I have to say like the people who find me are people who have been to those doctors, have told them that nothing is wrong with them, but they’re still sick. So I have a skewed population, the type of people that come to see me and so out of those I’m going to say anywhere between 40 and 50% are usually harboring some sort of parasite or something. And I disagree. I think a, a bug is bad if it’s causing problems for that person. Even if people think like blastocystis hominis, which is debated as whether it’s a unfavorable parasite or if it’s just commensal. But if you really dive into the to like learning about blastocystis, you’ll find that the research has conflicting data, where sometimes it’s okay and sometimes it’s not. But then if you go a bit deeper, you’ll actually find that there are multiple serotypes of Blastocystis hominis. And some serotypes are bad, and some serotypes are not that bad.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:28:36]:
So if I find Blastocystis hominis in a patient who is symptomatic, then I’m going to treat it. If I find Blastocystis hominis in a patient who is maybe not as symptomatic, then maybe I won’t go as aggressive directly at the blastocystis, but I’ll work around it to start to rebuild diversity and heal the ecosystem within the gut. You know, it depends on the person. I had a patient years ago who came to see me after she had been diagnosed with multiple autoimmune antibodies. She had joint pains, she had fatigue, she started breaking out in hives. And they wanted to put her on one of the biologicals at the time, I forget which one. Like back in the day, like Humira, something like that. That basically suppresses the immune response.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:29:33]:
Right. But they didn’t know where that was coming from. Interestingly with her, she had moved to the US From India and she was a young mom, so she thought that, you know, maybe the fatigue was because she had a four year old and she was just tired. But then she started breaking out in hives and then she was getting muscle aches and joint pains. It wasn’t Lyme, it wasn’t other things. And yet she had no gut symptoms whatsoever. No gut symptoms, which was wild because you, you would think that she would have some type of gut symptoms. She’s having autoimmunity, she’s having joint pains.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:30:14]:
I’m already thinking leaky gut, I’m thinking dysbiosis, I’m thinking endotoxin, all those things. But she didn’t have any complaints, said normal poops. So I did some testing, found that she had Blastocystis hominis along with a yeast. It wasn’t Candida, it was another yeast. I think it was like Geotrichum. And she also had wheat sensitivity. So we took her off of wheat dairy, treated the blastocystis, treated the yeast, and within two months, the hives were gone. The Energy was back and the joint pains were gone.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:31:02]:
We didn’t treat the autoimmunity directly. I treated the source of where her immune system was being put into this like over stimulated state. And she didn’t have any gut symptoms, which I think is so important to realize because a lot of people don’t realize that you don’t have to have any gut symptoms. Your poops might look normal, you could still have a parasite and what you’re experiencing in your body could still be triggered by something in your gut, even if you feel fine in your gut.

Nick Urban [00:31:35]:
Are there any stool tests or microbiome tests that you find beneficial? Because I know there’s some consumer accessible ones. There’s also a lot that are practitioner only. I’m assuming you use the practitioner test, but what about for like the overall market out there?

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:31:50]:
There’s still some like tests that can be acquired direct to consumer. But for me, like for example, like biome effects, that’s one, it makes the reporting a bit more understandable. But for me, like I want to look at inflammatory markers, I want to look at secretory iga, I want to see if fecal zonulin is elevated, I want to look at antibodies to gliadin, one of the gluten molecules in the stool. And, and I’m also curious about what’s going on in the microbiome, but it’s only part of the, the picture. Looking at digestive markers, bile acid metabolites, fat absorption. So I use a, a test called the Gut Zoomer. I’m not going to say like there’s no perfect test. I know a lot of people use the GI map.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:32:41]:
I did use the GI map for a period, but then I graduated to a different test because the Gut Zoomer gives me nine inflammatory markers, whereas the GI MAP only gives three. So I rather, and I, and I noted over time that those three might be negative, but other ones might light up. So just because those three are negative doesn’t mean that something couldn’t be going on. It’s just that it’s not being tested for. And I always tell people what you don’t test for, you’re not going to find. So just because a test might be negative, but if the person is still having symptoms, then there’s something going on and you just haven’t found it yet. So I mean, in the past I used a Genova test. I like that it shows diversity index.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:33:34]:
But I don’t find the current Genova test to be as helpful as the Gut Zoomer. And, and for Anybody listening? You have to understand, like, I’m not just taking. It’s not like a one to one. Like if the gut zoomer says this, then I do this. I’m taking the gut zoomer. I’m looking at the story that the patient presented with and all of my experience knowing how people react to different probiotics and interventions and putting that all together into the decision tree, that helps me figure out what to do with patient. So it’s not like, and that’s where I think things get a little bit wonky and wrong, is when you have practitioners who are just taking the test and reacting to the test and not really integrating it with the story of the patient. And that’s where, that’s the types of patients a lot of times that I’ll end up seeing is because they went to a practitioner that just used the test as the guide and didn’t really integrate that with the, the presentation and the story that the patient is telling them to fully understand how this person needs to be treated.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:34:44]:
We’re not, we’re not there yet. You know, I think we have to accept that the testing is imperfect, but it’s way better than it ever was before. It’s just not, it’s not the best that it could be, but it’s enough to guide us even from the beginning to now. Like, I’ve been doing this for over 17 years. The, the, the level of sophistication of the testing has improved by a lot. And I’m sure in the coming years it’s just going to continue to get better.

Nick Urban [00:35:15]:
Yeah, it makes me wonder about how many of the issues people have experienced over time that were chalked up to like, genetics or to some other health complications when they were really rooted in the gut. We just didn’t have the diagnostics and the ability to correlate the symptomology and the quantified biomarker deviations together into one complete picture. Because we couldn’t do that, we just mis ascribed the, their presentations to something totally different.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:35:46]:
Well, it’s like, you know, more most recently, we didn’t have really perfect ways to measure mitochondrial function. Right. And now we’re learning that mitochondrial health is behind everything. Diabetes, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, neurological diseases, dementia, any fatigue issues outside of the thyroid. Like, for years we, we associated fatigue with just the thyroid and no one was paying attention to the mitochondria and mitochondrial health. And we actually, you know, we could only look at it indirectly, like with an organic acids test, looking at metabolites of The Krebs cycle. So you’re not really looking at mitochondrial function. And yet now we have a new test that I did a couple of weeks ago.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:36:34]:
It’s called the ME screen, and it looks at mitochondrial function both at baseline and what happens when your mitochondria get stressed and gives you a read of how healthy your mitochondria are at rest, as well as when they are stressed. So it’s kind of like measuring your ability to react to hormetic stressors.

Nick Urban [00:37:00]:
Yeah. How do they stress your mitochondria?

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:37:03]:
They, you know, they explained it to me and I’m going to say I can’t remember right now exactly what they do, but they create a stress condition in a set in a cellular level because they’re doing this in petri dishes. And what they’re actually doing is not testing your mitochondria directly. They’re you using your serum from your blood and adding it to an established cell line that comes from rodents. That’s one of those cell lines that they perpetuate and use in science for all types of research. And then they look at how your serum influences the mitochondria in that cell. Now, it sounds also like it’s kind of like an indirect way of looking at things, but they’ve actually looked at this test in comparison to the gold standard, which is muscle biopsy, and they found that it correlates quite well. Obviously it’s inconvenient to do muscle biopsies on everyone and also painful looking at mitochondria instead, you can do a finger, finger stick and just collect your, your blood on a cartridge that then gets sent in. So it’s quite fascinating.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:38:19]:
Yeah. For. I’m going to leave those details right now to the ME Screen people, but it’s, it’s super fascinating. Like, I, I learned that my mitochondria are fined at rest, but when my mitochondria are stressed, my mitochondrial network breaks down a little bit.

Nick Urban [00:38:38]:
With that information. What are you able to do with it? Because to me, it sounds like it’s kind of interesting to know. I love, like, knowing these data points, but then unless I can actually turn around and translate that into a routine, a protocol, a supplement, something I can actually meaningfully impact, it’s like, okay, maybe I wish I didn’t know that my mitochondria break down when they’re under stress. The network breaks down when it’s under stress.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:39:01]:
Yeah. So to understand it a little bit better, I’ve been learning a lot about mitochondria lately, and Mitochondria, you know, are. There can be hundreds, thousands of mitochondria inside a singular cell, right? These mitochondria hang out in these little networks, so they tend to conglomerate with each other. So one way that they look at how mitochondria handle stress is if the mitochondrial network starts to fall apart when the cell is under stress. So they start. They start cooperating or hanging out in community, and they start to kind of break up. So part of that is the redox potential in the mitochondrial membrane, the phospholipids. So you’ve got to reestablish the healthy membrane.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:39:57]:
And you can do that by supplementing with things like phosphatidylserin and phosphatidylcholine. The other thing that I learned in terms of, you know, there’s. There’s a lot of different pathways to restoring mitochondrial health that I think are really cool in the biohacking world, right? From fancier, more expensive things to something as simple as intermittent fasting. So intermittent fasting, another way to improve the resilience of mitochondria. So, which is something that I wasn’t doing very consciously, except for, like, on the weekends, because I always feel like I need to eat breakfast. Like, I’m not one of those people likes to skip breakfast during the work week. But bringing in some intermittent fasting, adding in the phospholipids, which helps to improve mitochondrial health. And then another little particle that I learned about at the biohacking conference, and I actually knew about it, but kind of relearned.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:41:01]:
It’s called ESS60. It’s a carbon 60 molecule that becomes a free radical scavenger. It helps to protect the mitochondria from reactive oxygen species. And taking that also can help to repair and renew the mitochondria. So between intermittent fasting phospholipids and the ESS 60, that’s three easy things to do to start repairing the mitochondria without having to go go crazy doing a ton of things. If you want to throw in a biohacking thing in there, you can start doing hypoxia training with the intermittent hypoxia hyperoxia machine. And the hypoxia is also going to help improve mitochondrial health. Again, it’s like stressing the system.

Nick Urban [00:41:48]:
Yeah, exactly. You can also help improve the redox state of the mitochondria by adding in other intracellular antioxidants like molecular hydrogen or melatonin. What are the other ones? There’s a handful of them that are also abundantly.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:42:03]:
You’re listening, you know, like, But. But honestly, like, if you don’t have a repaired phospholipid membrane and you haven’t restored the redox potential, it’s not gonna. It’s not gonna matter as much what you throw in there in terms of antioxidants until you fixed that, that redox potential. Because you need that gradient between positive and negative in order to power the cells. And that apparently is where the breakdown happens. I’ve been speaking to the people at this. I had a. A long meeting with a science officer at Body biopc that creates a phospholipid complex.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:42:45]:
And, yeah, I mean, the mitochondria create tiny little batteries inside the cells. So it’s not. Our energy isn’t all just ATP. It’s actually being produced by positive and negative gradients within the cells. So another thing, super easy. Get out and get sun. You know, like, get some sunshine on your skin every day. That helps to boost mitochondrial function.

Nick Urban [00:43:17]:
How controversial but true. Yeah, I’m with you on that. Yeah, sadly, that’s controversial.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:43:21]:
Vitamin D. Vitamin D also really important for the tight junctions in the gut. So many people walking around with vitamin D deficiency because we’re so crazed about, like, avoiding sun exposure and protecting our skin.

Nick Urban [00:43:33]:
There’s also like 12. I think it’s 12 photo products that are created when we expose our skin to UVB light and UVA light, which are naturally present in sunlight. And of course, it’s better to get the. The full spectrum of light than it is to isolate and concentrate any one particular wavelength for long periods of time.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:43:53]:
Yeah. Or mitochondria respond to light. So, yeah, there’s. I’m sure you’ve talked a lot about that in your podcast.

Nick Urban [00:44:03]:
Yeah. Is there a link between mitochondrial health and the gut?

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:44:07]:
100%. So any. This is why I. I kind of love that I started at the gut and that I’ve pretty much spent the last 17 years of my life just learning about the gut and the gut microbiome because everything ties back to the gut. So you can’t bypass the gut on your way to repairing your mitochondria. If you want to repair your mitochondria, they’re not going to be repaired. If your gut is leaky and allowing all sorts of endotoxin inflammatory substances to get across the gut, they’re all going to mess up your mitochondrial function. So you could be doing all of these biohacks and the urolithin A and all that, but if your gut is a mess and your gut border is leaky, then you’re just gonna be climbing up the mountain, but slipping back down every time.

Nick Urban [00:44:55]:
Sidebar Real quick, is the concept of leaky gut, AKA intestinal permeability, now recognized by mainstream Western medicine as an actual thing?

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:45:07]:
I mean, it’s recognized by anybody who’s actually read research papers, but a lot of gastroenterologists and doctors out there haven’t spent the time looking at it because they still think it’s woo woo. But they’ve done endoscopic ultrasound studies where they can show the increase in gut permeability in different things. Like in celiac disease, there was a study done where they looked at the effects of gluten on gut permeability in patients with celiac and versus patients with non celiac gluten sensitivity, which is what I have, and normal patients. And they found that, as would probably be expected, patients with celiac disease had the highest increase in gut permeability when exposed to gluten. The people with non celiac gluten sensitivity had the second highest. And interestingly, even people who were normal had no sensitivity still had some level of increase in impermeability when exposed to gluten. That’s why I think, you know, that we are seeing so many people with non celiac gluten sensitivity right now, because I think over time with exposure and antibiotics, pesticides, stress, all those things add up as well as too much gluten exposure eventually leads to gluten sensitivity. Even in a person who started off as normal.

Nick Urban [00:46:35]:
What role do you see? Food sensitivities and intolerances. Not allergies, but sensitivities and intolerances playing in terms of overall gut health. For example, I know that if I eat certain foods like peanut butter, I feel it. I feel terrible for a while afterward. And it seems to me like that’s a food sensitivity. I don’t break out in hives. There’s no allergic reaction or anything. But I can venture a guess that it’s not good for me when I consume peanut butter because of the symptoms I experience.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:47:07]:
Yeah, there could be a number of things there because peanut butter is oftentimes contaminated with aflatoxin. So if you have any level of mold sensitivity, the peanut butter might just be kind of unearthing that sensitivity that you might have to mold. The other thing is that peanut butter, being a saturated fat, becomes a carrier for endotoxin. So it could be increasing your influx of postprandial endotoxin. We know that fatty meals, especially saturated fat, will increase the influx of endotoxin into the, the blood. And they’ve done studies on healthy male volunteers where they had them eat like a big slab of butter and then measure endotoxin levels and saw that their endotoxin levels went up post meals. But interestingly, when you threw in something like a spore based probiotic, it reduced the level of endotoxemia post meal. So I wonder if you had the peanut butter with a spore based probiotic if that would actually reduce that.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:48:13]:
Unless you’re having some sort of mold toxicity that might be triggered by the aflatoxin that’s oftentimes in peanut butter.

Nick Urban [00:48:21]:
This is actually an interesting thought experiment because when I consume a other foods that are high in saturated fat, like ground beef, grass fed ground beef, I do not have any, I don’t feel bad at all after that meal. So it’s probably not just the endotoxin. I guess I could try taking the spore based probiotic and see what impact if any, that has.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:48:43]:
And then, and are you on, I’m curious, like, can I ask you this on air? Like are you on any types of oral peptides like BPC157 or Lorazatide or anything like that?

Nick Urban [00:48:56]:
No, not currently.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:48:58]:
So I, I used to be dairy sensitive and, and also I’m gluten sensitive and I started taking just BPC157 last fall. Typically I would not eat dairy in the winter because I would get sick and I would definitely not eat any dairy in terms of like cheese, never milk, but let’s say cheese because I love cheese. Going into like February, March, leading up to spring, I would have terrible spring allergies. Right this, I think it was like October I started taking oral BPC157,500 micrograms, rapid release so that it’s releasing in the small intestine. And I was able to have cheese dairy all winter and not have any symptoms and went into spring and did not have allergies. So you know, to bring it back to the, your question about food sensitivities and stuff because really we’re sensitive to a food because the gut is leaky and there’s two parts to it. If the gut is leaky, then your, your chances of becoming sensitive to food are higher. If on top of that you have low stomach acid or you don’t break down the food well enough, then you’re more likely to have short peptides that are more antigenic because we don’t react to amino acids.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:50:32]:
Right. And we don’t really react to anything that’s less than like nine amino acids long. So any really short peptides, but anything longer than that, we can develop an immune response. And if you have a leaky gut, then you’re very likely to develop food sensitivity. And that’s where, like, removing these foods is an important part of the healing process. Because you don’t want to keep, you know, you, you don’t want to keep poking your immune system if your immune system is already kind of like angry as it is. You don’t want to keep poking the angry white blood cell, but you also want to go to the source of it. I mean, the, the reason that things aren’t working well is your, your gut lining is messed up.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:51:13]:
You’re not breaking down nutrients properly. So enzymes and restoring the gut lining. And honestly, for years, like using L glutamine, like some of the kind of the, the more classic nutrients that we use to restore gut permeability, I haven’t seen anything work better than the peptides. And, and the peptides is the first time that I’m seeing food sensitivities reverse themselves to the point that I was able to go to Italy in March and have gluten and not have a reaction per se in my gut to the gluten. Now, did I have a food coma after having a pasta meal? Yes. That’s not my regular way of eating. But I didn’t react and I can. And the only comparison I have is that I went to Italy 11 years ago earlier, and I had pasta and pizza.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:52:10]:
And after the trip, my gut was a mess for several weeks. This time, went to Italy, had no restrictions on pasta, pizza, all that, but also did not have any gut issues while on the trip or on the return. Now, I do have another biohack that I use for the gut that you may or may not have heard of. You were asking me what are some of the other things I use for gut restoration. And they’re called SBIs or Serendipit Bovine immunoglobulins. They’re basically immunoglobulins that you take orally and orally they’re not going to absorb. They can’t. They’re too big of a molecule to pass through your gut border.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:52:56]:
But what they do is they bind things like endotoxin and cytolithal descending toxins. So they’re going to go into your gut and they’re going to, they’re going to trap that molecule and then they don’t let it go through your gut border. And by doing that, then they’re giving your gut border a break and allowing your gut to heal. So another thing that I did in Italy when I knew that I was cheating on my diet, quote, unquote, is take some SBIs as well.

Nick Urban [00:53:24]:
One of the things that I was going to ask you about is the confounding factors about your Italy trips, because it’s a very common story to hear. People go abroad, they can eat everything just fine. And perhaps it’s the lack of glyphosate and thousands of other chemicals that are absent in their foods. But if you did a similar trip more than a decade previously and you did react and you did have gut issues when you came back, it sounds to me like if anything, the amount of chemicals everywhere on planet earth have increased over time. So it’s probably not just that if you had the same or similar experience previously.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:54:00]:
Yeah. And, and I can also add to that that I have never been able to have dairy or cheese in the winter without becoming more susceptible to getting viruses. So part of the reason that for, I don’t know, prior to this winter, probably for over 15 years I have not had any dairy the in the winter because I noticed that I would get congested and then next thing I knew I was getting sick or I wasn’t sick all winter this time and, and I was having dairy, which in the past would weaken my immune system and would make me susceptible to viruses. And the only thing I did differently was adding the BPC157 orally to my regimen. That was the only thing that I changed.

Nick Urban [00:54:54]:
Are you familiar with Joel Green’s work? With what?

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:54:58]:
No, with what?

Nick Urban [00:54:59]:
So he has a paradigm he calls immune centric health. And it’s basically about the gut and immune system and how that is like the core of basically all of health, including of weight loss slash fat loss. And he has a protocol, it’s, I think it’s called a two day core in which you basically, basically reseed your microbiome and you slowly titrate up on certain foods that you have intolerances to. Not allergies, but intolerances. And I did that, I think it was last year. And I couldn’t tolerate dairy since I was a kid. I used to drink a ton of it, consume a ton of it back then, but not for most of my adult life. Followed his protocol.

Nick Urban [00:55:35]:
And then after a while I tried reintroducing some clean dairy sources and I could tolerate it again. But now I’m curious If I stack BPC 157 on top of that, if that would really make the foods even more compatible.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:55:50]:
Interesting. And you just did the protocol for two days?

Nick Urban [00:55:53]:
No, it’s called a two day core, but it’s like a multiple month long, like slow titration up so that you can tolerate it. And it involves, I think, I think the supplement is called human milk oligosaccharides HMO and then also a polyphenol rich berry or you can use actual berries or polyphenol rich berries powder and then some. I think it’s apple peel powder, don’t quote me on that. And that’s for increasing levels of Akkermansia a natural way without pushing it to the extreme. Because if you have too much Akkermansia then you have issues as well.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:56:25]:
Yeah. So three comments on that. The, the human milk oligosaccharide, it’s a very special important prebiotic that’s produced in, in lactation and milk that when you’re breastfed as an infant helps to build up in the gut, which is very critical and important in the early development of the gut ecosystem in, in babies and toddlers. So that number one, because it helps boost bifidobacteria, bifidobacteria also help support the production of butyrate. Then the second part, the polyphenol rich supplement, polyphenols. Actually studies have shown that pomegranate and citrus bioflavonoid polyphenols actually help to stimulate and restore the mucus layer of the gut, which is that layer that protects the gut lining. It’s divided into an inner outer mucous layers. And in a healthy person, the inner mucus layer actually has no back bacteria.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:57:35]:
It’s completely sterile environment. And our probiotic bacteria live in the outer mucus layer, but not in the inner mucous layer that has antimicrobial peptides and secretory IgA, things that keep that layer completely free of any bacteria. And then the citrus peel or pectin is high in quercetin. And quercetin is a type of bioflavonoid that Akkermansia loves to feed off of. But also Akkermansia needs the mucus layer. So that’s why it’s called Akkermansia muciniphilla. It loves mucus, so it feeds off of the mucus. So really rebuilding Akkermansia is all about rebuilding the mucus layer.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:58:19]:
So that’s interesting. Now if you were to have stacked in BPC157 into that protocol, I didn’t increase my dairy Exposure slowly. I just took BPC 157 for about two months and then I just started having dairy in whatever way I wished and noticed that I wasn’t having a reaction. So I just kept, you know, just doing what I loved.

Nick Urban [00:58:48]:
That’s pretty cool. You mentioned a word there I want to double click into. And that is butyrate. It’s a substance I’ve talked about a little bit. Joel also talks a lot about it in his work. And it’s protective effect on the body and specifically the gut. It’s also sometimes supplemented. But it seems that you can consume fiber and other things in the diet and ideally make some of your own butyrate or not you don’t make it, but your gut, your gut micro make it.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [00:59:18]:
Exactly. I mean ultimately you want to support butyrate factories in your gut. But it’s also a supplement that I use a lot with patients because butyrate is super important for a variety of reasons. It’s, it’s the energy source for the cells that line the colon, so helps keep the colon healthy. But also it’s anti inflammatory, it increases insulin sensitivity, crosses the blood brain barrier in the brain. It triggers the release of brain derived neurotrophic factor which helps with neuroplasticity, learning and memory. So butyrate is probably one of the most important short chain fatty acids that are produced by the gut microbiome. And you don’t have to get it directly.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [01:00:04]:
Like even when one thing that we found is like when you’re, when you’re drinking a probiotic beverage like a kefir, even if you don’t have butyrate producers there, the bacteria in there are supporting other bacteria in the gut that are butyrate producers. So there’s something called cross feeding. Because a lot of times people argue like you know, if you’re taking a probiotic beverage or like a yogurt, like it doesn’t have that many different species of bacteria, how can that benefit you? And it turns out that they actually, they create an environment that allows for other probiotic species to flourishing.

Nick Urban [01:00:44]:
So cool. And that since it’s a short chain fatty acid that would make butyrate a postbiotic. But when you’re actually supplementing it, there’s different forms. Like I think there’s sodium butyrate, then there’s like tri butyrin or something like that. What do you use?

Dr. Vincent Pedre [01:01:01]:
A lot of times I’ll, I’ll either use a sodium butyrate or I’ll use the calcium, magnesium, butyrate. Depending on the patient, if they’re constipated, I’ll tend to use more the Cal Magic butyrate. Again, I don’t have any relationship with the company, but I like the body bio products, so I tend to use those in patients. I don’t think there’s a perfect butyrate out there. And, and actually if you think about it like some of the butyrate that’s being taken orally probably never gets all the way down to the colon where it’s needed for colon health or the, the health of the colonocytes.

Nick Urban [01:01:41]:
So.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [01:01:42]:
And I have yet to see someone come up with an extended release butyrate. But that would probably be a great idea is to create an extended release butyrate to get to the colon instead of higher up in the small intestine.

Nick Urban [01:01:58]:
What if you’re consuming adequate fiber? Isn’t that getting fermented? And that takes time, so it would be more extended release. Plus you’re getting fiber at each meal.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [01:02:07]:
You’re supporting the internal butyrate factories. Right. If you’re taking foods that are rich in inulin or other types of fructo oligosaccharides or galactoligosaccharides. Yeah, because those, those are the, the prebiotics that get fermented to create those postbiotic products. And ultimately that’s what we want, is you want your own system to be making those things rather than having to depend on externally on supplements. But anybody, you know, butyrate is really great for anybody who’s suffering from chronic inflammatory response syndrome, anybody who’s had mold toxicity, who’s had severe leaky gut, lots of food sensitivities. It’s a good tool to heal the gut while you’re starting to do all those other things. Because someone who has severe gut issues might not be able to tolerate those prebiotic fiber rich foods initially until they’ve done a certain level of gut healing to get there.

Nick Urban [01:03:11]:
I was about to ask you that. So for someone with fodmap sensitivities, they can still use a butyrate product and not experience the complications that we get from eating FODMAPs.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [01:03:21]:
Exactly. And also anybody with a FODMAP sensitivity can also use a polyphenol rich prebiotic without getting more gas production because polyphenols are not metabolized into carbon. What is it? Methane? CH4.

Nick Urban [01:03:42]:
Couple other questions for you. And that is another substance I’m sure you’ve come across. Maybe you’ve used, I guess, two substances, colostrum and or lactoferrin.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [01:03:55]:
Colostrum, definitely. Colostrum is just another version of immunoglobulins. I tend to go more towards the SBIs, the serum to buy bovine immunoglobulins. There’s some really great research there in people with ulcerative colitis using serum to buy bovine immunoglobulins at a dose of 5 grams twice a day, having a flare that’s been unresponsive to other interventions. There is a within one week of taking orally serum divide bovine immunoglobulins there in one study, it was a 12 week study, they had 43, about 43% remission response within the first week to patients with non responsive ulcerative colitis using these serum divide bomin immunoglobulins. Colostrum is similar. The only thing is that colostrum is going to have some of the dairy proteins in there. So someone who’s dairy sensitive may have issues with colostrum, whereas they won’t have any issues with the SBIs.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [01:05:06]:
So because I see a lot of people with dairy sensitivity, I tend towards, I favor the SBIs just because of that, because you don’t have to worry about dairy sensitivity, but with any of these you have to worry about the fact that they are binders and someone who’s prone towards constipation might get constipated if they take too much colostrum or any type of oral immunoglobulins.

Nick Urban [01:05:35]:
So clearly this is all multifactorial. It helps to have a deep background and understanding in clinical experience, testing to see what works and understanding patient characteristics, symptomology, bio, individuality. Do you use genetic testing at all in your practice or personally?

Dr. Vincent Pedre [01:05:55]:
I, I use it not as much as I probably should, but it’s something that I want to start incorporating. But I do use it somewhat.

Nick Urban [01:06:05]:
And then what is the link between gut health and coffee?

Dr. Vincent Pedre [01:06:10]:
Ooh. Well, something that people may not realize is coffee is rich in polyphenols. But there’s a lot of other things that could be found in coffee that could be detrimental to gut health, including ochratoxin, mold, mycotoxins as well as pesticides. Because if you’re not drinking.

Nick Urban [01:06:30]:
I wanna pause you right there. You’ve, you’ve now mentioned mold a bunch of times and mycotoxins and aflatoxin. How common are issues that you’re seeing with those in practice? It must be pretty common because it keeps coming back up.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [01:06:42]:
When I test people for mycotoxins More often than not. And again, my population is pretty skewed and I haven’t done population wide studies, but I do see them come up a lot. Yeah, like the aflatoxin, the ochratoxin. And some of this can be from food exposure and some of it can be from water damaged buildings.

Nick Urban [01:07:07]:
Yeah. I know from running my own genetic analysis that I have extra sensitivity to mycotoxins and mold based toxins and I can’t remember if it’s the airborne or the foodborne type. But now I have extra reason to look into it. So thank you for that.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [01:07:23]:
But yeah, you should look back into that because maybe that’s why peanut butter doesn’t sit quite well with you.

Nick Urban [01:07:30]:
Yeah. And I also have done a couple rounds of BPC since I last discovered that and I’ve noticed that when I’ve had it recently in moderate non heaping amounts that I’m able to tolerate it. And it could be the bpc. But even if it was the BPC that made so I can tolerate it, I still have a feeling that it’s better for me not to consume it if there’s aflatoxins and different things in it. At least not in any decent quantities because there’s no point of like testing my body’s limit to figure out how much it can handle. It doesn’t appreciate that. I’m sure.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [01:08:02]:
Probably a good idea. Not clearly.

Nick Urban [01:08:05]:
All right, back, back to coffee because I derailed you.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [01:08:08]:
It’s all good. Yeah, no, I was talking about all the, all the things that people don’t realize are part of coffee culture. When you’re going out and getting coffee, you don’t know if it’s an organic versus a non organic coffee. And coffee is one of the most heavily pesticide sprayed crops on the planet. And pesticides are gut disruptors. So you might be getting exposed to pesticides, you might get exposed to mycotoxins depending on the quality of the coffee or how the bean has been prepared. And then most American coffee culture centers around going and getting a cup of coffee and taking it to go. And those cups are lined with plastics.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [01:08:55]:
So you’re getting, as soon as that hot liquid hits the plastic, it’s releasing microplastics into the coffee that you’re going to be drinking. So there’s a lot of negative connections with gut health. Because for example, we know that microplastics disrupt the gut microbiome, cause the growth of bad bacteria and disrupt the mucus layer that we were talking about that then leads to leaky gut but there’s a lot of really good things in coffee like the antioxidants, the polyphenols, the chlorogenic acids that help to act as prebiotics for the gut microbiome and help to stimulate the production of things like GLP1 naturally that helps with satiety signals. So it’s kind of like a balance between the two. And I, I think that’s something that people need to realize because coffee is probably one of the most consumed beverages on the planet and it’s the microhabits that create the macro effects on our health.

Nick Urban [01:10:01]:
Yeah, exactly. And choosing a coffee that is polyphenol rich because the average American gets most of their daily polyphenols from coffee specifically. Is that why you got into the whole coffee world?

Dr. Vincent Pedre [01:10:14]:
It was part of that and partly just growing in the coffee culture as a Cuban and wanting to just kind of bring back some of that and also look at it from the angle of gut health. Because most people are not thinking about the gut when it comes to coffee. And there’s a lot of people who suffer, millions who suffer from acid reflux. So I wanted to create a coffee that was not only organic, toxin free, mold free, but also low in acidity for all those people who love coffee but can’t tolerate it because they have an acid reflux or heartburn. So that’s that. All those reasons and the fact that I enjoy my morning coffee and I have a very sensitive stomach were reasons that I decided to get into coffee.

Nick Urban [01:11:09]:
If people want to give it a shot, where can they go to grab your coffee or to connect with you online?

Dr. Vincent Pedre [01:11:15]:
They can go to happygutcoffee.com to learn more about the coffee or just go to happygutlife.com I have a lot of free resources there. My blog, usually we write about gut related stuff. So we’re, we’re writing things that are connected to gut health in all different types of ways. But we research our blogs, we cite scientific literature, so it’s very informative and educational for people. And then I’m always putting out free content on Instagram @ Dr. Pedre.

Nick Urban [01:11:51]:
Perfect. Everything we’ve discussed will be in the show notes for this episode. So you guys can check that out and click on any of the resources links we’ve mentioned. Dr. Pedra, any final parting advice, words of wisdom you want to leave listeners with if they’ve made it this far?

Dr. Vincent Pedre [01:12:08]:
Ooh, yeah. If you made it this far. Go outside and get some sun. Get some vitamin D. So simple.

Nick Urban [01:12:16]:
And then will you be exhibiting at any upcoming health events anytime soon.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [01:12:22]:
I will be exhibiting with Happy Gut Coffee at the Ultimate Wellness Event Summit or Conference at the Faena Hotel in Miami beach towards the end of September. And I’m also probably going to be at the Biohack the World event in Miami November 1st 2nd or something like that. Beginning of November. Yeah. And and next year probably back at the Health Optimization Summit in Austin if they decide to do it in Austin again. I’m not sure what they’re going to do it.

Nick Urban [01:12:55]:
Yeah, we’ll see. Well, I’ll see you at one of these upcoming events. Great chatting with you. And until next time, be an outlier.

Dr. Vincent Pedre [01:13:02]:
Thanks Ben.

Nick Urban [01:13:04]:
Thanks for tuning in to High Performance Longevity. If you got value today, the best way to support the show is to leave a review or share it with someone who’s ready to upgrade their healthspan. You can find all the episodes, show notes and resources [email protected] until next time, stay energized, stay bioharmonized, and be an outlier.