Welcome to episode three of the Energy Balance Podcast. I'm Jay Feldman of JayFeldmanWalnutist.com and joining me today is my good friend Mike Fave of SapientSystems.com. Today we're going to be doing part two of this two part series on gut function. So if you haven't listened to part one, make sure that you go check that episode out first. Today we're gonna be talking all about the different foods that we can be eating and how they affect

our gut function. So basically which foods are ideal and which ones are really destructive for our gut function. And it's definitely worth mentioning that it might be a little bit surprising as far as which foods are not ideal for our gut function because those are a lot of the ones that we're told are the healthiest for us. And then we'll also talk a little bit more about the relationship between gut function and energy. And we'll talk more specifically about the effects of low carb diets, keto diets,

carnivore diets and fasting on our gut function and why these are really not ideal for having a healthy gut and then how that relates to basically improving energy balance. To check out the show notes for this episode, head over to jfeldmanwellness.com slash podcast where I'll be linking to any articles or studies that we reference throughout the episode.

And if you're struggling with any low energy symptoms, whether that's fatigue or brain fog or bloating or gut inflammation or weight gain, head over to jfeldmanwellness.com slash energy and sign up for a free mini course on energy balance where basically I'll help walk you through all the different things that you can do to help support proper energy production and how to avoid the things that can block this process.

And with that, let's get started. So obviously this is a very different way of looking at food and nutrition than the mainstream.

Speaker 2 (02:14.36)
They basically inverse the idea of the pyramid.

Yeah, it is. It's basically, Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. Which obviously the food pyramid isn't really around anymore, but the ideas still are. And yeah, it's a very different view that's based around having proper gut function and allowing for proper energy production, minimizing toxins, shaping them proper. What's that?

and version.

Speaker 2 (02:40.652)
and having optimized malnutrients.

Yep. And shaping the microbiome properly. And that was one thing that we didn't touch on quite as much with some of these foods, or specifically the fruits, is that, I know I mentioned it earlier, is that there are these various antimicrobial compounds that are in these foods. And these have helped to shape our microbiomes. So with the assumption that fruit has been a major part of our past as a species, our microbiome has then developed to fit

are consumption of a high amount of fruits. so because of that, the various bio, like a lot of the polyphenols that we talk about in fruits are bioflavonoids. These are talked about, like it's recognized that these have a lot of antimicrobial properties and they can be used as antibiotics. Yeah. And they help with even antibiotic resistant bacteria, various things like that. And so those compounds in the fruits to antibiotic are actually really important for shaping our microbiome in the way that allows for the right bacteria to thrive and the harmful bacteria to be suppressed. Which is just another major factor to consider as far as, it's just another reason why the foods, like we've talked about the foods in this order, is because of their effects on the microbiome directly with these sorts of compounds.

Exactly. So a lot of people think that the beneficial effects of these polyphenols and flavonoids and different plant compounds that you can find in the fruit and whatnot is because of their direct effects in the body. To some extent, they do have direct effects, but a lot of the compounds aren't actually absorbed. We don't actually absorb them. They go directly to the colon. They're undigested. And then once they hit the colon, bacteria break them apart.

And then you get the effects from them. But when they hit the colon, they also have their different effects as different antibiotics or different bacteriostatic or they stop the growth of particular types of bacteria while allowing the growth of other types of bacteria. this goes, as Jay was saying, it goes hand in hand with the idea that we come from a lineage genetically of animals that are eating main fruit.

Yeah, evolutionarily, genetically.

evolutionarily that are eating fruit. So our bodies have, we have evolutionary adaptations after that period, but on a basis that's the diet that we started with is being fruit eaters. Another important point here, it's slightly tangential, but, and it just ties in nicely to look at how things function overall of what we talked about. A lot of our microbiome is initially set up with breastfeeding and the breast milk and colostrum and all these different components have all these different types of factors that inhibit the growth of some bacteria and allow the growth of other bacteria. And that's what sets up that ecosystem for us to start. A lot of people aren't breastfed now. I mean, that's, think, partly why you can see a lot of these digestive orders, digestive disorders increasing. But the important point I want to get to here was for animals that are fermenting their food in the colon, particularly apes, their breastfeeding period is something like five years.

 And that's because since they're relying on fermentation, they need to have a very strong ecosystem present. Whereas for humans, the ideal breastfeeding period, at least from what I've read, mean, a lot of the stuff now says six months, but it's generally two years. And that's because we don't rely on the fermentation as much. But that two years of breastfeeding is basically what allows our colonic environment to be set up appropriately to deal with some of different foods that we're gonna eat. So when you're not breastfed, it becomes more important to rely on foods that don't cause as much damage as if you have a dysbiotic bacterial population there and are easily digested, number one, and then some that can reach the colon that have a neutral effect or have some of these polyphenols that can not cause those negative effects for you. So I think that that's just an important point to throw in there.

Yeah, yeah, it's a really important point. Basically how our microbiome is set up with breastfeeding. Another important point as far as considering our environment and what we're exposed to is that our food supply, like we mentioned that there's various caveats with the different foods that we mentioned. A lot of that has to do with our modern food supply. Of course, there's some positives here, but for the most part, it's really tough to get good quality fruit that's ripe because a lot of it is picked much before it's ripe and then it's as opposed to being tree ripened. And that can sometimes be problematic, or at the very least, it's still hard to very ripe fruit. Another quality or another point to consider is soil quality, which you had mentioned earlier. And also just the circumstances that foods are grown in, because we talked about these defensive compounds that the plants produce. And when the plants aren't grown in as good of environments, they produce more of these defensive compounds.

Which again makes sense to, you know, as far as an adaptation for them, but it's a lot worse off for us. finding good quality fruit can be a challenge. By the same token, a lot of people don't recognize that much of the foods that are eaten in the mainstream are centered around grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds. For example, wheat products are pretty much everywhere, any sort of bread or pasta or crackers or cakes. All of that is coming from these types of foods.

So really the bulk of our diet is often centered around those things.

Yeah. I guess an overview, I guess we covered fruit to a large extent. I guess there's some other aspects that we should talk about fruit before I give an overview. So people, a lot of people do have issues with certain fruits. And there are reasons for this. And the main reasons are, number one, as we already touched on, unripe fruit has defensive compounds or fruit produced in stressful growing environments with poor soil quality and things like that have a lot of defensive compounds. But the next thing to consider is that some fruits do have certain types of fibers in them or carbohydrate sources in them called FODMAPs, which is fermentable oligo, dye, mono and polyols, are based with mono, dye, saturized. And then the last one is polyols. And there are these certain types of sugar alcohols and carbohydrates.

That we can't digest and they go straight to the colon and then they can cause rapid fermentation in the colon. So for some people, your microbiome or the flora in your colon is not set up appropriately, these can cause symptoms. They can cause a lot of issues because like a lot of substrate or a lot of fuel sources being sent down to bacteria. If you have a pathogenic overgrowth in there, then you're literally feeding the pathogenic overgrowth for some people.


For some people. Then the next thing to consider is that in at least in studies with humans and this happens in I'm pretty sure this happens in the rats and mice as well. There's only a certain amount of fructose that can be absorbed by the intestine without glucose. So when there's not enough when you don't when you just have fructose when you just have a ton of fructose and in some studies only people some people can only handle an excess of five grams of fructose over glucose.

But some people, they can handle up to 50 grams of fructose over glucose. Most people fall somewhere in the range around 20 grams of fructose or less over glucose. So when you have this excess fructose without the glucose, your intestine doesn't absorb it. So then the bacteria use it as a substrate and they ferment it and then they produce a bunch of products. And since it's a very simple sugar, it can cause the growth of pathogenic bacteria.

And so a lot of people can have issues with that. And so a lot of the studies, you know, hear all fructose is bad for your liver, this or that. What's actually happening in a lot of these studies is besides the fact that they're feeding animals polyunsaturated fats and a lot of sucrose, which is a bad idea, because the polyunsaturated fats basically have a negative impact on the ability to metabolize that sugar in the appropriate way and have a general negative impact in the liver themselves.

A lot of the studies are feeding either pure fructose or a combination of glucose and fructose with much more fructose than glucose or extremely high quantities of these different sugars. So what winds up happening is the intestinal tract of these animals is not absorbing all of these sugars, especially in the high fructose groups. And then what's happening is when the researchers are testing the contents of blood that's being extracted from the intestines that absorb the sugar, and being sent to the liver, they're getting high amounts of endotoxin in there. So basically what it's showing is the fructose isn't being absorbed in very high amounts, bacteria fermenting it, they're producing endotoxin. And so it's not the fructose that's necessarily damaging the liver, it's the endotoxin that's created from the fermentation of the fructose that's damaging the liver. So when somebody goes and says, fructose is bad for your liver, you gotta look, okay, yes, fructose alone is bad for your liver, sure. If you have a lot of, and it's not the fructose itself.

it's ingesting high quantities of fructose alone and then leading to bacterial products being produced in the intestine, which then goes to your liver that's after your liver, but not the fructose in and of itself. So that's, and the other thing to consider here is, especially for humans, considering our evolutionary ancestry involved animals that were living primarily on fruit, which has a high amount of free sugars and a high amount of sucrose to sit here and consider that eating too much fructose is gonna make humans fatter, cause problems for their liver, especially from sources like fruit. In my mind, it's just a relatively idiotic concept. From our evolutionary lineage, you have apes eating a ton of fruit. We're coming from there. It's like all of sudden we lost the capacity to digest these types of sugars. It doesn't make any sense to me. I think for most people, the two issues are the FODMAPs and the excess fructose to glucose. And I think an important consideration here is that the issues with fructose is fructose alone, and fructose is generally not found alone in nature. There's very, very rare sources of pure fructose found in nature.

Right. Yeah. And that's the most important point in regards to what you're saying is that, yes, free fructose, we don't digest it very well, but in fruits, typically there's a pretty good balance between fructose glucose. And then you also have sucrose in there, which is half of each. So that's not really. Yeah. Yeah. You have the polyphenols too, which helped to prevent the bad bacteria from consuming these, these components. But yeah, the important part here is that these.

But sugars are typically balanced. we don't have to, like the effects of pure fructose aren't really relevant because we're often getting more or less equal amounts of glucose and fructose in nature. And then the other point to consider as well is that a lot of the fructose studies are also done on rats and rat livers do basically have a much lower capacity of handling fructose and sugar in general relative to ours, which comes from the fact that we have to have really well-functioning livers to support our brain function with more sugar. But all of that is more in-depth things that we'll be talking about in the future. I think that that covered things pretty well as an overview. Of course, we can't get into the caveats for every single food group and every single type of food right now, because there's a lot of them. And that's all these different principles that we'll continue to talk about. But from the gut standpoint, I think that we tackled it pretty well. So I think it sounds good to leave it there, unless there's anything else you wanted to add.

Well, the fat system I think is very relevant to the gut. The specific function of like bile acids and the different fatty acids for absorption and stuff like that, binding endotoxin and basically keeping the end of the small intestine clear and stuff like that. And then obviously we talk about the migrating motor complex.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Let's let's touch on that real quick. We can talk about basically the effects of fats on our digestive systems. We're not going to talk about the specifics of the different types of fats like polyunsaturated fats versus saturated. Okay. Yeah.

So as we talked about before, you can't really have a sterile colon. There's always going to be bacteria in there. But since we have an absorptive function, you want your small intestine to be relatively sterile. I mean, it's not entirely sterile, but it's very, very low in bacterial counts.

Yeah, the reason is because we basically that's where we absorb our food. And so we want to absorb our food before bacteria do. And if there are bacteria up in our small intestine, they're going to then consume that food and produce toxins, which is called it's also called SIBO. It's a pretty common issue, very common with hypothyroidism and a low metabolic function because low metabolic function depresses the things that keep our small intestine clear, which we're kind of going to touch on now. So go ahead.

And so it's just for anyone who doesn't know SIBO stands for small intestine bacterial overgrowth. So a lot of people they go on these low-fat diets and they're eating these high-grain diets and all these different types of things and it's like they're getting bloating and then eventually they start to have digestive issues in their small intestine as bacteria migrate all the way up. a lot of people don't know this, at least in my experience, but what actually keeps the small intestine clean of bacteria to a large extent is bile acids and fatty acids in general. And so the fatty acids in general, or the fats in general, have a either bacteriostatic or an antibacterial effect or an antimicrobial effect in the intestine, especially when they're broken down into the different fatty acids and whatnot to be absorbed. So they wind up killing the bacteria that's there and then bile acids in and of themselves are actually, which the fats stimulate.

Are actually antibacterial, antimicrobial themselves, and then they also stimulate the defensive mechanisms of the small intestine. So you have multiple compounds going here. Then the other thing to consider, and I'll break it down in simple terms once I go through it, but you have the fats also induce other enzymes, such as alkaline phosphatase and lipase, which also degrade and have antibacterial factors as well.

So you have fats here at the top. you eat the fats, most fats in general, there's there's caveats here to the different types of fats, but we won't get in that. You have the fats here. When you eat them, they stimulate the bile acid production, bile acid production by the liver and then the excretion of bile acid from the gallbladder. Then you, they also stimulate the release and the production of alkaline phosphatase, which is a particular type of enzyme. And they also stimulate the enzyme lipase.

Then after that we go here we have bile acids. Bile acids actually stimulate a defensive mechanism of the small intestine when they're released by activating a specific receptor, their name of the receptor. I mean I could tell you it doesn't really matter. then. OK, the receptors the PharmaSoyde X receptor. I'm sure that means absolutely nothing to anybody. Doesn't mean much to me either. And then the next one is the bile acids also enhance the digestion of at this point.

Or enhance the enzymes of digestion in general So you have this whole system here from the fatty acids in general that are functioning to clear out the small intestine and the function to keep the small intestine clear and optimize digestion there so So we have the fruits which are keeping the colon the fruits in some of the like root root vegetables and things like that keeping the colon and good health and then for just for ease of generalities the fats help to keep the small intestine in good shape and help to keep the small intestine clear.

They obviously won't work together. The fats generally shouldn't be reaching the large intestine because they're going to be absorbed and the bile acids are also going to be absorbed. Obviously, if you have gallbladder issues, that's a different story. But the fats will generally keep the small intestine clear. The fruits can help with that as well. And then the fruits sort of help to maintain the colon in the particular environment in the colon. So you have these two things going together and actually work together nicely.

And then considering human anatomy and physiology towards digestion, you sort of get like a complete picture overall. We're starting to see all the pieces fit together relatively nicely.

So what you're saying here is that what you're basically suggesting is that it's important to be eating enough fats because the fats keep the small intestine clear through all these different mechanisms, stimulating bile acid production, different enzyme production, all of which keeps things moving through properly, digesting properly, and keeps it clear of the bacteria that have antibacterial effects, bacteriostatic effects. You also mentioned certain defensive mechanisms of the small intestine. What were you referring to there?

So basically what happens is this particular, so bioacids activate this particular receptor, as I said, the Farnesoid X receptor. And then the Farnesoid X receptor has like a general up regulation of epithelial defense of the small intestine. like strengthening the barrier of the epithelium and then increasing antibacterial effects or antimicrobial effects. The other point that I left out that I think is important is that fatty acids, when they're in the intestine, stimulate the release of cholecystokinin and cholecystokinin stimulates the release of digestive enzymes and stomach acid and things like that. Then a lot of people use something called digestive bitters to stimulate the vagus nerve and then stimulate cholecystokinin.

CCK for people who notice that. Yeah. Yeah.

but the, the fatty acids also do that as well. So the fatty acids have like a general stimulating effect on digestion and on protecting the small intestine overall. There's obviously other important functions of the fatty acids besides that in the body, but we're not going to cover that now. That's just from like digestive perspective. There's a lot of benefits to them. And it's obviously there's specific ones. Like we're not talking about digesting, like, taking a bunch of corn oil or anything like that. There's specific bats that we would use, overall these bats have those protective functions and it breaks down by the different types of bats. It is semi-important, but we will cover that in another episode.

Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a really important point to consider as far as the effects of fats on our digestion. so let's talk a little bit about the migrating motor complex. Now, this is basically the, of like the movement of our intestines in a way that moves food throughout the intestines. and it's affected by various factors. But one thing that's really important here is it'll make sure that the that we are absorbing the foods that we can absorb and then the food that the bacteria will absorb or will digest is then going to make it down to where the bacteria are, which prevents the overgrowth that would happen in the small intestine as well, which is important to consider and also helps to keep things moving quickly. And this is this is a factor that's inhibited pretty strongly with like low metabolic function. So this is talked about a lot with hypothyroidism.

But it's known that there's a pretty tight connection between thyroid function and overall metabolism and the migrating motor complex. And because when we have a low metabolism, this effect is basically inhibited. It then leads to SIBO very commonly. So it kind of is one of the main factors explaining that connection between metabolic function and SIBO, which is, again, one of the worst, like, gut issues you can be dealing with because it then leads to this toxin production and also inhibits the absorption of different foods, which just kind of highlights the importance of the migrating motor complex. Other factors to consider there would be the amount of time between eating, which I know you've talked about, Mike, or basically having at least around four hours or so.

Yeah, so it's three hours. It's four hours from the start of the meal. But three hours for me, I say three hours from the end of the meal. So they say there's an there's like a general range of time, but it's about on average is about 180 minutes. So you tend to you generally want to leave about 180 minutes from the end of the last meal till the beginning of the next meal if you're having a lot of digestive issues, because basically any time you eat food again, it stops the migrating motor complex and then it restarts it again.

So say you have some food in the small intestine that you ate from the last meal an hour ago. And if it's like a relatively difficult to digest food and you're having a digestive issues, then when you go to eat again, now that food's not digested and it can sort of sit there. If you have bacterial overgrowth, bacteria are gonna digest it and things like that. And then you can get symptoms. So for a lot of people, they should be okay. But if you're having digestive issues and waiting that particular amount of time can be very helpful.

And just to be specific about what the migrating motor complex is, it's basically just like a wave of contraction along the intestines. I guess you could think of how a caterpillar moves or like how an earthworm moves or something like that. Or it like contracts all the way down. It's like if you were going to have a hose and you stripped the hose, essentially the muscles contract and move the food all the way down. And the signal for that, the main signal for that is number one having good thyroid function, but number two every time you eat it's going to trigger that to start over again. So something to consider that can be important if you're having lot of gut issues.

Yeah, and of course, that's not a universal recommendation. You kind of mentioned a couple of caveats, which I think are important. It's important to mention that for some people, it might be more important to eat more frequently to keep blood sugar regulated, to keep their metabolism up. So there's it's just something to consider if you're having gut issues, it can help some people.

Again, it also depends. What you mentioned, this is what constitutes as a meal and what kind of has to be digested, digested. So if you're just having some fruit versus if you're having a meal with
proteins, fats, and carbs, having those smaller snacks wouldn't have as much of an effect on the migrating motor complex, right?

Yeah, and it depends on the food too, because something like a steak, a fatty steak cooked in butter, is going to take much longer to digest than something like fruit juice. if you're going to have, for breakfast you have a couple eggs cooked in butter and maybe a banana fried in coconut oil with some juice, that's going to take a lot longer to digest than if you just had a fruit smoothie with some strawberries and blueberries and pineapple juice or something like that. I don't know some type of just fruit and juice. Things like starches take longer to digest.

Proteins and fats take probably the longest to digest. But they usually are the most thoroughly digested compared to some of the some of the other foods. And then things like fruit juice are obviously very rapidly digested and then things like coconut oil are also which is specific type of fat is very rapidly digested.

We can get into this another time, the specifics of it, but you can use different foods that are digested in different ways to affect the rate of digestion, and you can use them at different times and things like that. But in general, the idea is that if you have your how many meals a day, three, four meals a day, if you're having digestive issues, then leaving three hours between each meal can be helpful. But with that said, as he talks about, you can have blood sugar issue if you have blood sugar issues or anything like that, you need to make sure that in those meals, you're eating enough carbohydrate and enough fat and protein to last that three hours such you're not just crashing your some people try their low fat diets and then want to try and implement this, this system. So if they're having like a low fat like very little starch diet, and they're eating a lot of like, quick sugars to digest with proteins, they're gonna you're not gonna last three hours between the meal. It's gonna hit that for a lot of people.

Yeah, which is true. And there's other caveats there to a low fat diet. But by the same token, that three hours for the migraine motor complex is an estimate. And if you're eating mostly quickly digesting sugars and just protein, it's probably going to digest a lot quicker too. So that would affect that guideline also. So in that case, eating more frequently wouldn't cause an issue there.

Assuming your digestion is okay, because if you have C-bone, you're putting in a bunch of sugar all the time, you could develop it. I mean, you should be okay, but some people who have it bad can really develop some bloating and issues from that. And it also really depends on the... There's individual aspects to these things. We're going over generalities. So like for different people, you can have different effects.

Yeah. So, one thing that we didn't talk about was low carb diets, carnivore diets, ketogenic diets, and their effects on gut function and why a lot of people have benefits on these diets and why a lot of people specifically with gut issues have beneficial effects on these diets. And we'll talk through some of the specifics and in the future especially we'll talk through the drawbacks from these things and why it's really important to include carbohydrates in the diet.

Today we'll talk about it in terms of gut function. to keep in general, the main factor that's going on here is that when we're only eating animal foods or we're avoiding carbohydrates for the most part, we're avoiding any of the foods that would be potentially feeding harmful gut bacteria. So these gut dysbiosis, having pathogenic overloads or SIBO or whatever it is,
are very, very common and they do a lot of different symptoms that a lot of people experience.

And so when people go low carb and stop feeding these microbes, the toxins that are typically produced that they're overloaded with that are causing all of these symptoms, the bloating, brain fog, joint pain, you know, reproductive issues, whatever it is, energy issues in general, a lot of those symptoms are relieved because they don't have the same toxin production because they aren't feeding whatever microbes are in their gut that are causing all these issues. that's been shown to be one of the main factors that is responsible for the effects of these diets. Intermittent fasting is another one too. Whether it's intermittent fasting or just fasting in general, where the primary benefit there all comes down to the lack of toxin production from the gut and...

For a lot of people as a whole, could say this is beneficial, but there's a lot of drawbacks to these things and there's much better ways to reduce toxin production without starving your body of carbohydrates or calories or leading to blood sugar dysregulation and other things.


Yeah. So I mean, besides just getting rid of things that will feed a dysbiosis, there's a lot of things that people are doing when they go on these carnivore keto diets that are changing a lot of important factors beyond just the idea of, I'm not eating any carbs. So a lot of people try to sell it at the idea as like, carbs are the problem, and this is why we're having all these metabolic issues.

The reality of the situation is on a lot of levels is that it's not that carbs are the problem. It's that the carbs that people generally eat before they're coming to these diets are a bunch of starches. It's bread, pasta, things like that. And a lot of people are not breastfed. A lot of people have been eating this way for an extended period of time. So they have a pathogenic microbiome.

 They have a pathogenic flora. And so what they wind up doing is when they're eating all these foods for an extended period of time, they're actually they're actually poisoning themselves to some extent every time they eat, especially with these different grain-based carbohydrates and processed foods and things like that. So what winds up happening is they eat and they poison themselves. And then when they go on this diet, they've eliminated not only the poison of the toxins or anti-nutrients of those particular foods, pasta, wheat, cookies, breads, whatever else, they also are eliminating the effect of the like the inflammatory effect of the microbiome that they have going on in their colon. And then also if they had some sort of overgrowth into the upper gut, the small intestine, they're not feeding that as well. So that's what Jay just touched upon. That will make people feel significantly better. It'll have a host of beneficial effects because even though they have the carbohydrate going in and carbohydrates are necessary for function, they are 100 % necessary.

Anyone who says that they're not doesn't know what they're talking about physiologically. for a high level function.

Well, in general, even if you're not eating carbs, your body still has to produce carbs. You still have to produce blood sugar. So like, you're either gonna pull it, you're either gonna break it down from your own proteins, and this is a different story, or you're gonna ingest the carbohydrate itself. But the thing is, if you're ingesting a bunch of carbohydrate that's feeding these bacterial populations, and then the bacteria are throwing off different metabolic products, cheers. those metabolic products are going to inhibit your ability to use those carbohydrates anyway. not having the bacterial stimulus or the toxin and then the toxin of those foods is a net positive over not having the carbs. you can not, you don't have over here, you don't have carbs.

So you're, you're at, you're at a degree of, of deficit in terms of energy, right? Or in terms of fuel, you're at a degree of deficit in terms of fuel, but you also don't have things inhibiting that, that, that turning of that fuel into energy. And you also don't have things that are also directly inhibiting other metabolic processes. So yes, you don't have the fuel, but you're also not being constantly poisoned when you eat. the other side, you have fuel coming in. 

This is when you're eating the grains and all these processed foods and things like that. You have the fuel coming in, but your body can't use the fuel because of the metabolic toxins from the bacteria. And then you're getting metabolic damage from those foods in general that the low carb avoiding those sorts of hard to digest foods and whatever is better is better than eating a bunch of garbage food. It is definitely a benefit. Then the next point that comes into here is, so when they drop the carb foods, people still eat some degree of fiber. So they wind up going to carrots and green vegetables and low-calorie high-fiber starches from things like zucchini squash and stuff like that. And then some low-calorie fruits or low-carbohydrate fruits like berries.

And so these foods also happen to have a high amount, especially berries and chocolate and things like that, have a high amount of polyphenols and flavonoids and different types of fibers that they wouldn't have had before. And those are more protective over the microbiome and way less damaging than the other foods that they are eating. So you have, now you have, you're not having the toxic foods and you've lowered, you're not having the poisoning anymore from your colon. And now you're having foods that are moving you in the opposite direction with the spinach and well-cooked broccoli and carrots and blueberries and chocolate. And I'm not necessarily recommending these foods in general. I'm just saying that these foods have a generally beneficial effect, especially in compared to the other options that they have available. So on this side, you don't have carbs yet, but you're moving towards a non-pathogenic microbiome and you don't have the poisons from these other foods. So now you're two places better.

Then the other thing to consider when you go on these low carb diets is unless you're doing the whole low carb high, low fat, low carb high protein thing, which is, I mean, in my opinion and from what I've read is a absolutely terrible idea of metabolically, you're generally going to have to get your calories from somewhere and oftentimes it's going to come from fat. And as we said before, fat has a lot of optimizing effects on digestion. So it strongly improves your digestion. It strongly improves liver function, it strongly eliminates microbial issues in the small intestine. So now you have three factors here. You're not poisoning yourself with bad foods anymore. You're moving your colonic microenvironment to, or your microbiome to a better state, and you're optimizing your digestion to some extent with the fat. So now three of these are solved, and obviously the other thing is now you're getting a lot of high quality protein and stuff like that and nutrients from animal products. So now we're, this is a set, now we're talking about like low carb high fat paleo and this makes a lot of benefits for people because of all these factors are changed. It's not just carbs. Carbs is like one of the least important factors that we're talking about here. It's all these... Well, terms of the benefit that they're getting, it's not removing carbs that gives them the benefits. It's removing all these other associated factors with the carbs and then replacing them with better factors than the ones that they had previously. But then...

Right, yeah, it's not, yeah then what you wind up seeing happen and you can ask people in the community is then they start to get some type of, then they like, they're feeling pretty good overall, but things just aren't 100 % yet. And that's because you, at least in my experience and from what I've read, you needed to create carbs. But then when people add the carbs back in, they're like, they add in the carbs like white rice or like fruit juice or something like that. And it's like, and it's like, well carbs weren't.

Carbs maybe aren't that bad and then they still for them is like if I keep it under 150 grams a day or something like that. And it's not necessary, again, it's not the carbs. What is the source of carbs that you're using? What comes with those carbs? What nutrients are coming with those carbs? Things like that. And then the last important point here specifically towards the carnivore diet is that a lot of people who do well on the carnivore diets, at least in my opinion, at least from my experience is dealing with gut stuff.

Is that some people just have a microbiome in their colon that is very dysbiotic and going on a diet like a carnivore diet leaves very little residue to go into the colon. Very, very little residue. So what winds up happening is you just basically everything you're eating is just getting pretty much digested and that's it. 

So if you had a very toxic microbiome and like for an example of this is somebody like and this is famous, is Michaela Peterson, right, or Jordan Peterson and these types of people. When you look at the health issues that they had going on, Jordan Peterson was suffering from, at least from what I remember, depression and anxiety and things like that. And his daughter, think, Michaela Peterson, had rheumatoid arthritis, and she actually had joints replaced when she was a teenager, so her ankle or hip or something like that. And with both of these states, as we talked about before, If you have pathogenic microbiome, in Jordan Peterson's case, when you have a pathogenic microbiome, there's direct integration into your nervous system with that. Because you have your enteric nervous system, which is directly linked to your brain, your central nervous system. So it's going to affect your mood. It's going to cause anxiety, depression, and things like that. So when he goes on the carnivore diet, he doesn't have as much of those metabolic products from that pathogenic system, from the pathogenic microbiome.

And all sudden he feels better. like, yes, of course you're going to feel better. You're not being poisoned every time you eat now. And then for Michaela Peterson, a lot of these autoimmune diseases, at least from the current research that I've read, seem to be a degree of some type of latent infection or some type of strong dysbiosis of particular bacteria in the intestine, like with certain diseases like ankylosing spondylitis or... or Crohn's disease or things like that associated with like an overgrowth of Klebsiella bacteria, which is a gram negative bacteria or rheumatoid arthritis being associated with streptococcus bacteria and things like that. So when they go on these carnivore diets, their symptoms are going to decrease because they don't have all these metabolic products being produced by the bacteria in the intestine. And so when you see people like, in my opinion, you see people like Jordan Peterson and Michaela Peterson, it's like, yes, they're obviously gonna have the benefit.

They have an extremely pathogenic microbiome in their colon. So when they eat all these different foods, it's literally every time you eat, you're being poisoned. So when you don't have things feeding that and you can still get some nutrition, you are going to feel way better. Even if you don't have carbs, even if you don't have all these other nutrients, it's like that's fine because you're not being poisoned. Because even when you have the poison, when you're being poisoned by the bacterial products, no amount of nutrients and carbohydrates or things like that

are going to necessarily stop that effect from happening. Your body still has to process those, and if you have an overload of those, sometimes it can cause issues for people, even if they're eating good.

Yeah, well, you can't convert those carbohydrates to energy anyways when that process is being blocked by those metabolic toxins produced by the gut bacteria. yeah, you made a bunch of really good points there. A couple of things I wanted to mention, of course, we're talking like carbs versus fats is coming up a lot here. That's a pretty, as far as which one we want to use for fuel, which one's ideal, all of that, and ketones as well.

It's a pretty in-depth topic that we won't talk about now, but I'll at least link to a few articles I've written on it in the show notes so that people can get some information there. But yeah, as far as these different low-carb variations, while they do provide the net benefit, what we're basically saying is that at best, they're a short-term band-aid for any of these issues, where they are gonna lead to short-term benefits, and you could make the argument that the...

The net effect is still beneficial, but in the long run, there's going to be various issues from the lack of carbohydrates metabolically, which can then also lead to further gut issues. The other thing to consider too is that while some things might be in place to help the microbiome, at least in some ways, it's more of avoiding the issue. Like you're avoiding the microbiome issue by not feeding it. And when people do typically introduce carbs after they have just as much issue.

Digesting them as they did before and they have all the same symptoms that they did before So then when they get to this point where they find that all right Maybe I do need some carbohydrates and they try to add carbs in they end up getting all these symptoms that they had before when they had the carbs in and then they're kind of left with two bad solutions to bad options and a major part of that is a because metabolic low metabolic function depresses all these different digestive functions that we talked about and then the other thing too is that the proper carbohydrates in the diet help to shape our microbiome and allow the good bacteria, quote unquote, good bacteria to proliferate in a way that protects us from the bad ones. basically what I'm saying here is that the low carb is doubly bad for the metabolic side and then also from the gut side, while there are some benefits, mostly it's avoiding the problem and the problem actually just gets worse in long run or at least doesn't improve because the right types of carbohydrates are necessary to improve those gut issues.

And I think it's two things that are important here is initially you said that that's a conversation of carbs versus fat. And I think that for us, the question isn't car isn't ever carbs versus fat. You know, the question is that for us, it's all three micro macronutrients are needed. The question is in how much for each person. So I know where you were getting at before is a lot of people have the talk about using carbs versus fat from an energy perspective.

Yeah, as a fuel in the mitochondria, which is, I just want to put a little caveat there that in our perspective, we are never having an argument about whether we should use only fats in the diet or only carbs in the diet. Our perspective is that you should be using both fats and carbs in the diet, but for different purposes for each of them. So you're going to have carbs, you're going to have your fats. Obviously fats have the beneficial effect on digestion, there's hormones and stuff like that.

And then carbs have beneficial effect for energy processes and thyroid function and things along those lines. So like they do different things. It's not just, it's not a question purely from the perspective of energy, the burning of these things for energy. It's just not how things work. It's like a very skewed perspective. And it's like, it implies that the only thing that that carbs and fats are used for in the body is fuel. And that is not reality. They're used for quite a different number of things.

And to sit here and like have that argument, like at least in my perspective, just it does. For us, it's like that doesn't even make any sense. But I know some people are there and that's fine. But I just want to clarify that for us, we're not here going to say, you can only eat carbs. You can only eat fats. We're saying, no, you should eat both. Let's figure out what quantities work. And like, this is the, this is the reasons why behind. the second point I was going to talk about, I completely forgot because I wanted to.

All right, well, when you remember, let me know. I'll riff off that first point. So yeah, I mean, it's a great summation. There is a difference between carbs and fats as a fuel, and it is important to discuss that, not right now, but it's an important point because that's what we're saying is one of the main issues outside of the effects on the gut from a lack of carbohydrates. The effects metabolically of not having ingested carbohydrates as a fuel is very important, and it leads to depressed metabolic function.

So it is important to consider the effects of carbs and fat as fuels, but as Mike was saying, carbs and fats also serve other purposes outside of fuel. And so even if we're saying that carbs are ideal as a fuel, which again, so many stipulations there and we'll talk about the details in the future, that doesn't mean we want to avoid fats as fats serve a lot of other purposes that are also really helpful.

Exactly. So yeah, I think that's great. I think we should close it there. That's pretty good overall. I'm going off on stipulations and tangents.

I agree.

Yeah, yeah, no, it's a good idea. You'll have to let me know if you ever remember what that second point was.

All right. That's going to wrap up this series on gut function. hope you guys enjoyed these episodes. And if you did, please leave a review or like wherever you're listening. It really makes a big difference in helping us reach more people. And if you'd like to find out a little bit more about me, you can check out my website at jfeldmanwellness.com or Mike at his website at sapiensystems.com. If you'd like to check out any of the links or any of the articles or studies that we reference throughout today's episode. can head over to the show notes at jfeldmanwellness.com slash podcast. And if you'd like a little bit more guidance in helping to get your energy back or recover from any low energy symptoms or any chronic health conditions, head over to jfeldmanwellness.com/energy and sign up for a free mini course on health and energy balance. 

Basically, I'll walk you through all the different things that you can do in order to support energy production and avoid how you can avoid all the things that inhibit energy production so that you can basically get your energy and get your health back and Again, thank you guys so much for listening and I will see you on the next episode