Jay Feldman 0:12
Welcome to Episode 43 of the energy balance podcast, where we teach you how to live without constant hunger and cravings, fatigue, brain fog, poor sleep and all sorts of other low energy symptoms by maximizing your cellular energy. I'm Jay Feldman. I'm a health coach and independent health researcher, and joining me again today is my good friend Mike Fave. Mike and I have been studying health and nutrition together for a long time now. Mike also draws on his experiences from working within the healthcare industry. Today's episode is part two of our autoimmunity series. In part one, if you did not watch or listen to it already, we discussed the alternative views of the immune system and of autoimmunity, and we also talked about the problems with the mainstream and functional medicine views of autoimmune conditions, and also the problems with their proposed solutions to autoimmune conditions. So if you did not listen to that first episode of the series, I would highly recommend you go back and do that, because in today's episode, we'll be talking about the bioenergetic view of autoimmunity. We'll be discussing why restoring cellular energy availability and raising your metabolism is the key to reversing the autoimmune state. We'll be talking about why avoiding carbs and sugar makes autoimmune conditions worse in the long run. We'll also be talking about why low carb, keto and carnivore diets are not ideal for autoimmune conditions and typically lead to short term relief at a long term cost. We'll also talk about why having enough saturated fats and carbohydrates from the right sources is imperative for autoimmune conditions, and we'll be talking about how you can restore gut health and why this is so important for autoimmunity. If you are new to this podcast, then after listening to this episode, I'd highly recommend you go back and listen to episodes one through seven, where we take some time to build a foundation as far as the bioenergetic view of health goes, and some of the primary things we'll want to focus on in order to restore that cellular energy availability. To check out the show notes for today's episode, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast where you can take a look at the studies and articles and anything else that we link to from this episode, and if you are dealing with any autoimmune conditions, or if you're dealing with other low energy symptoms like chronic cravings and hunger, low energy or fatigue, chronic pain, weight gain, any sort of gut symptoms or brain fog or mono imbalances, poor sleep, or any other low energy symptoms or chronic health conditions. Then head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/energy where you can sign up for a free energy balance mini course, where I will walk you through the main things that you want to do, as far as diet and lifestyle are concerned, so that you can maximize your cellular energy availability and also explain why this is the key to resolving these low energy symptoms and conditions. Now, before we dig into part two, I just wanted to give you a bit of a refresher as far as where we left off at the end of part one, we had just finished discussing the alternative views of the immune system, and these are the views that suggest that our immune system does not respond to self versus non self, and is not simply confusing our own body as a foreign invader, but is instead responding to energy failure and structural damage or danger, and that this is what's being sensed in this autoimmune state. So with that, let's get started.

Mike 3:48
So the reason this context becomes important is because this becomes important from a treatment perspective, especially because it's well, you can seal up the gut and you can you can eliminate all the protein triggers and things like that from antigenic foods, but at the same time, you still have to address the actual state of the body from a bioenergetic point of view, and deal with the any type of chronic or systemic inflammation that may be going on besides the whatever the trigger was, antigenetically from food or bacteria or whatever coming from the gut. So it's you can't just address the gut. You have to address metabolism as well directly. And that involves, you know, if you have a high amount of polyunsaturated fats, particularly Omega sixes, but also omega threes, addressing that if you if you have nutrient deficiencies, if you're not eating enough carbohydrate or enough calories and or food in general, all those things become important in in um, in the system. The other thing to point out here, and this is directly categorized in the stress response system, the activation, the chronic act. Innovation of stress systems like cortisol and estrogen and adrenaline and all these things that sort of promote each other over time, they induce an autoimmune profile, whereas chronic use of glucocorticoids and upregulation of estrogen actually helps to increase the What's it the immoral immune response, or the adaptive immune response, and push it towards an autoimmune situation. So the idea of just healing up the gut, and that's it, and being and eliminating all antigenic like a lot of people, and this is why, I think the reason we're getting here is that I think a lot of people go down these chronic elimination diets. And I'm not saying that the elimination doesn't help, because it definitely does, but in order to not having to continually eliminate, because you continually respond, have a negative response, yes, you need to. Yes, it's helpful. You don't need to, but Ms didn't tell anyone what to do. But yes, it's helpful to address any type of infection in the gut, that's fine. I'm not arguing with that. It's helpful to seal up the gut barrier, not arguing with that. But you also need to address the metabolic approach, and address nutrient deficiencies and address hormonal imbalances like the hypothyroidism or elevated chronic, chronically elevated cortisol or estrogen and progesterone imbalances, or hypogonadism and low testosterone and androgens in men, or altered cortisol to DHEA ratios. And these are all addressed through number one, lifestyle changes, but also specific dietary changes, including eating enough and getting proper amounts of macronutrients, including carbohydrates, which and the reason I continually bring up the carbohydrate component is oftentimes in the Paleo sphere, that's kind of not that's kind of balked at, and particularly in carnivore and the Keto sphere, the carnivore is like the ultimate elimination diet. I mean, it definitely has its pros. There's definitely, it's not like 100% negative, but there's also is a lot of negatives associated with it, because you only have the one food. And what I think a lot of people find is they have their chronic situation, their chronic issue, they go on these extreme elimination diets, whether it's keto, carnivore, autoimmune, paleo, and then they for a while, they start to realize that they're sort of in a hole as far as elimination goes. And then I think eventually, either they stay stuck in that hole and they continue trying to restrict more, or eventually they start trying to increase, increase more food, and then particularly carbohydrates. And then that's where you start to see, I mean, at least I saw this trend was people started moving more towards the idea of eating more carbs and then increasing carbs slowly over time with perfect health diet and things like that, and then just, and then choosing your carb sources wisely, you know, you because the other component with within all this is there's, there's still the lectins from the different foods and the different toxins are still, you know, there's still going to be an issue, and especially once you have that autoimmune predisposition, and you've activated that system. Yes, once you get the bioenergetic point of view back, it's still it's much easier to fall back in the loop. Once you've already entered that state, like it becomes easier to to reactivate it, but you know what the predisposition is, and where the flare and all that goes. So this point of view, this bioenergetic view, or the or the morphostasis or danger theory, which are all sort of linked together, sort of adds in the idea of context and and state to this idea of the, this very general idea of self, non self, or just molecular mimicry. There's, there's a lot of components involved that I think are really important. The other thing, and this adds those components. The other thing I want to point out here is that in a lot of pathogenic or pathologic processes, like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease, there's like, you have the direct damage to the brain tissue. But you also find, for example, like lipo fuskin, which is oxidized polyunsaturated fatty acids and iron, and you find elevated amounts of aluminum and in some of the dementia and Alzheimer diseases. And then you also find elevated amounts of endotoxin. You also find those in the plaques of heart disease patients, you also find, you find those in the damaged areas of Alzheimer's patients brains and things like that. And I think this, like all of this, is adding to the idea of a state response and the immune immune upregulation in response to these damaging toxins and processes at these at these specific sites. So it's important to, you know, there's all there's a lot of factors going into it, and it's addressing all those factors, and then also the and that includes addressing the state, not just the gut or just the well, the mainstream view doesn't even like it's just mostly genetics and some random trigger. So it's. Kind of hard to make any argument for addressing all the factors there. But I think the state is important and and, and keep in mind, because I think, like when you see a lot of kids with their responses, they tolerate a lot of things, and I think that maybe that's related, and a lot of us, I think, can relate to, when we're kids, we're able to eat and do whatever we want, and then sort of at some point in time, things break, and I think what breaks is the metabolic response first, and then you after that, you just become open to these insults. And the insults basically start to trigger these different processes. But the first thing is the state, and the thing is, is you may have had a singular trigger. You may find a singular trigger, like you lived in a moldy house, or you got some type of heavy metal poisoning from something you did, or, I don't know, you caught some type of infection that may have been a trigger. But this important piece to keep in mind is that's the straw that broke the camel's back, right? It's the one. It's the one thing that broke the camel's back, but you have to keep mind the entire pile of straw that came before that that led to the state that allowed for the camel sprack to be broken by that singular piece of straw.

Jay Feldman 11:12
Yeah, yeah. No, no, I agree. I wanted to tie up a bit of a loose end where we describe this alternative view of immunity and why energy matters, and how this energy disruption underlies the immune response. But I wanted to just clarify what that means in terms of autoimmunity. So again, in these alternative views, you have some sort of trigger, and this molecular mimicry where our immune system has just become confused and accidentally started attacking self. It forgot what was non self. It got confused because of this other protein that looked like self, and started attacking itself. And instead, from these base, you know, building upon these alternative views of immunity, our immune system is responding to structural deterioration and energy failure in the tissues that is causing a quote, unquote autoimmune response, and then what's happening is the immune system is just clearing out that damaged or, like, structurally degraded part of the tissue, so.

Mike 12:15
Or components that have gotten lodged there. So if you had some type of heavy metal toxicity, or, like, endotoxin, or something like that. Like, for example, when you see the atherosclerotic plaques and you find endotoxin in there, and you realize that atherosclerosis isn't just fat being deposited on the wall, but an actual immune response that takes place in the center of the arterial wall. Like when you start looking at those things, it's like almost everything is an autoimmune response at this point, right? But it's really auto like, is the idea of attacking self really there? If you have all these other ox can, like, oxidize polyunsaturated fatty acids and endotoxin and heavy metals and things like that. What's being what's really being attacked?

Jay Feldman 12:57
Yeah, yeah, and so and so. When you have these systemic, large scale issues. Sometimes they can be brought on by a pathogen, some sort of gut issue, some sort of leaky gut. That can be an aspect a trigger. But there are many possible triggers that all lead to some sort of an energy failure, structural failure, and that is, that is creating these antibodies to those aspects of the tissue. Basically, I think Jamie kind of referred to it as as a mess. So you basically have this particular type of mess that is being tagged as as this mess is a problem. We need to clean up this type of mess, and that is what the antibodies are in this autoimmune condition. It's not that your immune system is just attacking you. It's that there are these this, there's this underlying energy disruption, and and this damaged tissue that's being cleared out our immune system is helping us in this situation, and rather than just wanting to suppress it with medications, which can be helpful in reducing some of these symptoms, some of the inflammation type side of this, although it's recognized that this is not a long term solution, and the degradation does still happen in the long term. Instead of that, the better solution would be to fix the energy problem in the first place. As you said, once you're in this position where you you've already had the autoimmune attack, you are going to be susceptible to that happening again. But it's only going to happen if the damage happens again. It's only going to happen if the there's that systemic energy failure again, or localized energy failure. And so the solution here, which we'll be getting at, is restoring these energetic systems. And you talked about this as far as some very basic things, you mentioned, diet wise, as far as eating enough eating enough carbs, all of that, which we'll dig into. But fixing things on that level will prevent that from happening and prevent the need for the autoimmune type, quote, unquote attack. But it's really just a response, a clearing, and it completely changes this, this whole view, it's a much more cohesive view where I don't know our physiology or body makes sense. It's not trying to fight itself, but rather, it's a. It's working to help you. It's, it's just not being given the things that it needs. I mean, it's, it's in this kind of degrading kind of state, and so it's just a matter of fixing that underlying problem. And you did allude to a couple of factors that are important evidence for this side, beyond some of what we already talked about. One that you mentioned was that the stress hormone, stress hormones drive our immune system towards the the autoimmune side, the antibody producing side, towards the from the th one, the T helper cell ones, T helper cell twos. And that's really..

Mike 15:34
Which is a mainstream view, by the way, that is not like an alternative view that is in physiology textbooks that are given to nurses and doctors that is well known.

Jay Feldman 15:45
Yeah, yeah. And as we've talked about many times on this podcast, the stress hormones are produced also in response to an energy failure. And I don't think that's serendipitous or coincidental, that that the stress hormones are happening in response to an energy failure, and our immune system happens to respond to an energy failure similarly, to clear it out. And you know, in the case of the stress hormones, it's basically this very systemic, cohesive response to correct the underlying issue there. And the problem is, when this happens in such a such an intense, massive chronic state, that it becomes basically a problem. But yeah, so that's that's a pretty important piece of evidence there is that the stress hormones help to contribute to that shift to autoimmunity. You also mentioned the the sex hormones, like estrogen contributing, well, not all the sex hormones, but estrogen contributing to the same autoimmunity, basically in the exact same way. We just talked in a previous podcast about how estrogen basically is a stress hormone. And when you look at the other hormones that function on the other side of of metabolism that are very pro metabolic, progesterone, testosterone, pregnenolone, and all of their variants, those do the opposite. They suppress the autoimmune type state. And it's not because they're suppressing the immune system. This is kind of a bad way to put it, but they're suppressing the need for it. They're preventing the need for it by preventing the degradation, and often leading to the opposite, restoring energetic function and restoring structure. So that's another kind of important piece of evidence. A couple of others are just that. And I mean, I guess I kind of went out of order here. But the first one would just be that any sort of energy dysfunction. When we look at mitochondrial dysfunction, that's one of the primary things that leads to inflammation in the first place, and that leads to what's called a danger response in the first place. And then you have the signaling of the stress hormone. So each aspect of that chain is basically signaling, or moving towards a kind of autoimmunity. You're signaling the immune system. And there's also, there's actually a quote I want to read just talking about energy production and mitochondrial function and autoimmunity, just in this so this is specifically talking about what's called the redox state, which is basically just a barometer of the energetic state. And so this quote states certain autoimmune diseases may be due to redox alterations, rather than to a failure to deplete, suppress, tolerate or divert self directed B cell activity. In fact, in the same patient, different auto antibodies could be simultaneously masked and unmasked by redox reaction. So this is basically saying that the this entire arm of the, you know, autoimmune attack, or immune system, but this, this whole autoimmune situation, is determined by the energy state, rather than some sort of immunosuppression versus non immunosuppression. And interestingly, too, mitochondrial dysfunction and energy failure happens in the actual T cells in autoimmune conditions. So not only is it happening in the tissues, but in these autoimmune conditions, you also see it in the actual T the T cells.

Mike 18:54
Because it's a systemic problem. It's not just that one. It's not just the one. It's not like your thyroid just, and I think this is really important for people. Know, when you have Hashimotos, it's not just your thyroid. When you have ankylosing spondylitis, it's not just your spine. All of the autoimmune diseases are, are risk factors for other autoimmune diseases and heart disease and everything else. So it's, it's a well, one thing is singled out, and as to create this nicely categorized system. In reality, it is all a systemic response, like they and they all have predispositions for each other and other diseases along the same lines, because it's a systemic energy issue and a systemic inflammation issue. It's not just one thing.

Jay Feldman 19:38
Yeah, and that was actually the next thing I was going to mention, which is that none of these autoimmune conditions are just affecting that one system. They're all associated with, often other autoimmune symptoms or conditions and various other degenerative conditions. And you had mentioned cardiovascular disease and its association with various...

Mike 19:56
With almost every single autoimmune disease.

Jay Feldman 20:00
And you know, virtually all of them are associated with each other too, so, you know. And another huge piece of this, too is, I mean, it's acknowledged that's like, there's so much research showing that mitochondrial function or dysfunction is tied with virtually every single autoimmune condition. And there's also, and we'll talk about this as far as what we might actually want to do if we are in this state, like what we would want to work on, as far as diet goes and supplements. But there are a ton of pro metabolic supplements that are all shown to improve the these various autoimmune conditions, like all the different B vitamins, antibiotics, which you mentioned, you know, specifically the tetracyclines, which help to clear out pathogens, which are a huge part of this, but also have other beneficial effects on the energetic level. You also have supplements like caffeine and the various steroid hormones, pregnenolone and progesterone, t3 which is the active thyroid hormone, methylene blue, aspirin, inosine, various other supplements, which we'll touch on in, you know, a bit later, but they're all shown to have improvements in these autoimmune conditions. So and again, from the conventional view, the only way I think that they could argue that that's happening is that all those things happen to be immunosuppressive in some way, which I would argue, is pretty far from the case. If anything, it'd be the opposite. But yeah, do you have anything else that you want to add as far as kind of this bioenergetic view of auto, you know, autoimmune conditions and this alternative view of the immune system?

Mike 21:34
Oh, I just think it's important to, I think it's important to not try to reduce different diseases in different situations. But obviously, besides like, like, if you have a specific infection, right? You know, like, if you have a strep infection in your tonsils, or something like that, you get strep throat, there's obvious, there's a there's a component into there, into that, as well as to what allows you to get sick. But I think most chronic diseases are very much systemic issues and manifests as predispositions. And it's not you can't just treat that one area in this reductionistic sense of I have Hashimotos. So I take my thyroid and then I'm complete I take my thyroid hormone, I'm completely fine. It's like, no. That indicates that there's something systemically wrong, and it's just manifesting through the thyroid, but there's something overall going going wrong, and it's important to find, I mean, all these things that we discuss are theories So, but it's important to find the so is the conventional view too, though, just to No, but I'm saying all the, all The, all the points that we discussed all the all the different theories we discussed are just that theories. And it's important not to just attach to one theory or like one specific theory overall, but to sort of find what actually makes sense. And for example, like in the idea of the molecular mimicry theory, like, there's components there that make sense. You can't just throw out the theory all together, but there needs to be more nuance to that. And that's where you start to develop something like the morphostasis, or bioenergetic point of view. I think it's important to look for all the unifying components and try to really understand what's going on on a systemic I get, I hate to say holistic, because it's such a buzzword, but like a systemic, like holistic level, looking at it from all multiple points of view, and understanding the different components involved in the situation, while keeping in mind very basic principles, like, for example, the importance of energy um, and the importance of, like, general Structural Function of the gut and different things like that, and and function of the immune system. I think going into extremely reductionistic pathways without keeping the large picture in mind is very dangerous for trying to understand different disease processes. And just, I think it just leads us down pathways that don't go anywhere, and it just, and I understand why it's done, because you know you're going to need to know specific reductionistic pathways to sort of create a singular patented drug that you can, you know that you can make a lot of money off of, essentially, but most of these diseases aren't Silver Bullet cures, and that's why a lot of the drugs come with all these terrible side effects and don't really work long term, because you, like, you don't just break one link in the chain and solve the problem like it's a systemic issue. You don't just get rid of the bacteria and the gut entirely and solve the problem like there's other things going on that led to the issue in the first place, in the reaction to the bacteria. And I mean, I think it's kind of hard to just blame it on genetics. I mean, if you want to just take it, oh, it's just genetics, then, you know, that's fine, that's your decision. But I think that it's kind of hard, and I don't see such a large amount of evidence saying, Oh, it's just a genetic predisposition that just developed over time, you know. So I think it's important just to keep the whole. Big picture in mind, and try to find the unifying elements and what actually makes sense from all these theories to construct, you know, a overarching theory to describe it using general principles that also incorporates the mechanistic and reductionistic areas into one picture overall.

Jay Feldman 25:18
Yeah, I mean, I think that, I mean, I would say there's certain aspects of these different theories that are mutually exclusive, but you still want to be able to account for the results that are seen, for example. So even if the molecular mimicry idea doesn't make sense because that's dependent on self versus non, from my view, at least, doesn't make sense because it's dependent on the self versus non self idea, there is definitely value in recognizing how much, from the alternative view, that that they're using the molecular mimicry to support this, how much things like intestinal permeability or leaky gut and gut pathogens are affecting systemic health and affecting our immune system, and could be playing a role in autoimmune conditions. So definitely want to be able to, you know, include that evidence, but also recognize that I think that those theories are at least somewhat mutually exclusive, or entirely the molecular molecular mimicry and then the danger theory and Morpho stasis. Yeah.

Mike 26:22
Yeah. I just, I think it's important to take what works and throw out what doesn't. That's, I guess, the best way to say it, and to just try and find, you know if someone's getting this beneficial effect in some way from this particular circumstance, to not throw it out, but to try and understand how it fits into some sort of singular model that explains all this, the contradictions.

Jay Feldman 26:43
Yeah, absolutely, yeah.I agree, yeah. So considering this bioenergetic view of autoimmunity and the views of the immune system that is being built on, and this idea that what's really underlying these autoimmune conditions is an energy failure or damage, you know, a decrease in structure that's leading to these immune reactions, and eventually the quote, unquote, autoimmune state where we're seeing these antibodies to to this damage and to the energy failure or the tissues that are showing that, or the area that's showing that. But anyway, so continue or considering this view of autoimmunity, let's discuss how this changes what we actually want to do, as far as lifestyle and diet and supplements and everything that can actually lead to some improvements in these conditions. And also, let's discuss how this differs from some of the more common approaches, dietary and lifestyle wise, for these autoimmune conditions. So we talked about when, in the kind of functional medicine side, the functional medicine approach, where it all centers around leaky gut being the primary problem that leads to the autoimmunity in the first place, and considering that that's really the main goal, is to fix the gut, heal the leaky gut, and at the same time avoiding any triggers that could lead to the the immune response and lead to the kind of autoimmune situation via molecular mimicry. And so because of that, the general approach is some sort of elimination diet. The autoimmune paleo diet is extremely popular as basically one of the main uh elimination diets for these autoimmune conditions, where basically you are avoiding any possible trigger foods. And as we said earlier, those main ones tend to center around grains and eggs and dairy, and of course, why don't we throw sugar in there? Because sugar is just, you know, all around bad in the first place. So of course, it's going to cause autoimmunity, which we've done a couple episodes discussing why that is not the case. And I've some articles on that too, so I'll link to all those. But so you know, this extremely common approach that virtually anybody who is actually doing something lifestyle wise, to resolve or try to improve auto, you know, their autoimmune condition, it generally centers around that sort of approach where you're avoiding triggers and then you're trying to heal your gut with various probiotics or various supplements. And as we said, there's some merit there, where, of course, the gut plays a huge role. Intestinal permeability is a legitimate concern. Dysbiosis in the intestine is legitimate concern, even if these aren't necessarily the preconditions to autoimmune conditions. And you know, they, of course, can be in certain instances, and they can be a major contributor to a degradation in structure or damage and depletion of energy leading to, you know, the activation of the immune system and the autoimmune type response. So, yeah, I mean, do Do you want to maybe discuss, or start by discussing some of the issues with that approach, and then we'll go from there.

Mike 29:59
I mean, I think that. That overall, the autoimmune paleo diet, with the exception of the avoidance of sugar, is probably helpful for a lot of people, and I think focusing on addressing the gut will be helpful for a lot of people as well. But I don't think that you just eliminate all your triggers and then, or I haven't seen things where people just eliminate all their triggers and then there is stay off them for a while, and they continue to stay in the diet. And then things turn around, and then that's it. I haven't really seen much of that. I have seen people eliminate their triggers and go on the autoimmune paleo diet and, um, address gut health and and anything along those lines, and then basically get a complete remission of sorts from the autoimmune disease without having to go on to these very harsh drugs. I think that that's helpful. I think that that's better than going on strong immunosuppressant or immunomodulating drugs with a whole host of negative side effects and continuing to just eat and do whatever you want to yourself despite the obvious warning signs of actual systemic issues going on. But at the same time, I still think that while you addressing the gut is definitely a component, I don't think it's the only component. I also don't think that going zero CARB is necessarily a great idea for a lot of people, even if somebody has to go low carb for a little while just because of some type of gut issue, like some type of small intestine bacterial overgrowth, type of type of thing, and they need, like, a couple weeks or so to clear that out. Going on, maybe lower carb might be a little helpful for a while, but ideally, I think that carbs are important. So I think keeping them in the diet and then, and that's a part of addressing the systemic issue, is and looking at what's going on hormonally, what's going on with your thyroid, what's going on with your body temperature, metabolism in general, is an important part of addressing the key picture, of addressing the entire picture, and including addressing gut health. Because the gut the question is, what led to the compromised gut, gut health in the beginning? What led to the sort of series of events that happened? Was it just the gut health went bad? Was there something that impaired metabolism and then the gut health went bad? So I think you have, there are multiple areas need to be addressed. Um, so, and I think that the metabolism standpoint is helpful and important for maintaining the gut health. When once you resolve your gut health issues, maintaining that and keeping that going forward, without, without that, without this, um, without, like, addressing everything altogether, then what I've seen happen with people is they just continue eliminating things. It's like, well, I used to be able to aid able to ate this, eat this, and now I can't, and now I have to eliminate it. And then that's when I think people start going, Oh, carnivore, and all I can eat is steak. And for a lot of people, and I the thing that I want to point out here specifically is, if we're going to touch on this topic, is with carnivore, a lot of people do really well just eating steaks. And I think that's a testament to how well a lot of people's bodies digest meat and protein in general, and how a lot of protein sources from animal foods specifically tend not to cause issues for people digestive wise, it's a lot of people do pretty well with, with protein and with with the saturated, monounsaturated fatty acid sources. The other thing I want to point out here is a lot of people also use fruitarian or vegan diets to help with their autoimmune diseases, and they do get remission. And I think that it's important to realize that a lot of people do do well with fruits, and a lot of people do well with specific cooked vegetables. And some of the vegetables, some of them, they do fine with the vegetables raw. I haven't really seen many people go on grain based, high nuts and seed vegan diets and do very well with autoimmune conditions. That's just my experience. But I have, I have seen a lot of anecdotal evidence for the fruitarian groups or or at least some some of the vegan groups, and then also the carnivore groups, in dealing with, dealing with some of the autoimmune issues. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of like vegan YouTubers who, literally, who went vegan when they started, or vegetarian or whatnot, and eliminated some of their autoimmune conditions and like, have posted stories about and I think that, with that said, too, some of the anecdotal evidence is important to keep in mind and to look at and say, you know, because we, we fall into this camp. It's like, well, I'm carnivore. Well, the vegan couldn't, the vegan stuff couldn't ever work around vegan, and that carnivore stuff could have never worked. But when you have people going on carnivore, going on vegan, and finding beneficial results for whatever their ailment is or their situation is, you have to look at that end, or I like to look at that and basically see, okay, um, what's, what's the unifying principle here, what, what's the underlying aspect, and both the. Diets have their benefits, they also have their drawbacks. I mean, a lot of people with carnivore wind up becoming hypogonadal, at least based on labs and hypothyroid. And a lot of people with veganism are freezing cold and have vitamin deficiencies and protein deficiency that tends to play out. Take longer to manifest, and people can still have gut issues with with some of those as well. So I think it's important to, number one, see the benefits in those. Number two, keep them an open mind and try, and then we talked about this earlier, keep like, look for what's working and not just discount it because it doesn't agree with the ideology. And then also, when you're to back to the primary point, when you're addressing the whole autoimmune situation in general, the gut is a very important component. Neither of us are denying that. Neither of us are denying the importance of that elimination diets can play in avoiding lectins, which is the idea behind the autoimmune paleo diet, to a large extent, lectins and irritating foods and hard to digest foods to a large extent, and getting get rid of the basically getting rid of the irritants for a while. But we're also, we're also saying that focusing on metabolism is is of primary importance, getting the system back to oxidizing sugar, appropriately producing carbon dioxide, um, and taking in oxygen, making sure the hormones are functioning the correct way. You know you you don't want to, if you go on a heavy fish oil, low carb, like very low carb diet, you have, yes, you may eliminate a decent amount of inflammation, but at what cost? What do you what is the method that you're doing that? Are you strongly elevating cortisol because you're low carb? Are you eliminating most fermentable fibers in your diet? So if you had a gut infection, now it's not fermenting. And then you you're lowering the endotoxin or the toxic exposure, and then you have some of the I get, I guess, depending on what camp you're in, the immunosuppressive effect of the fish oil. That's, again, that's not the strategy that we want. We want to basically get the metabolism working appropriately, and part of that is the elimination diet. So I guess overall, is just addressing the picture entirely, and trying to do more than just and with the newer theories, trying to see it as more than just, oh, just, it's only a gut issues, like, no, it's, it's a systemic issue. There's systemic issue going on metabolically for some type of autoimmune disease to manifest. There's some inflammatory issue going on. The gut may be a very strong promoter, but why is this happening? Now? What's the overall picture? Right.

Jay Feldman 37:32
Right. It's a systemic energy issue. Oftentimes, gut dysfunction is involved there for two reasons. One, because gut dysfunction leads to issues that leads to issues with metabolism, with energy production, with excessive stress. At the same time, energy failure leads to issues with gut health. So we've talked about that relationship in a couple of previous episodes, and I'll link to it. But considering that, I mean, you know, you're gonna have issues with any part of the body when you're in this systemic energy failure, and it's not, you know, necessarily such an extreme state, it can just be something that builds over time. But your liver health is not going to be optimal, your gonadal health is not going to be optimal. Your brain function is not going to be optimal. On from there. So, you know, the gut is in pretty major interface, and we do want to make sure that things are functioning properly, making sure that we're doing the things that support proper gut health, again, which we've talked about previously and we'll touch on today. But these are also the same things that are going to help us everywhere else on that systemic energy level. So that's that's the whole point of the bioenergetic view. So yeah, it's important to note those things. And I want to clarify also that, you know, you mentioned, not discounting what works, and that there can be benefits on veganism, benefits from from carnivore, benefits from the autoimmune paleo. And what we're doing here is trying to, and you mentioned, also there are these drawbacks to these things or these benefits. So what you know, to kind of string that together. It's, it's trying to sort out what is working in these situations and why and why, and then creating something that does not have those same drawbacks. And this is kind of, you know, we're kind of working backwards here, as it's kind of like bottom up as opposed to top down, which it's good to have both. I mean, it's good to see the evidence and make sure that when you're working up, it meets those higher level views from the other direction. So higher level down would be kind of bioenergetic view down and then evidence up, meaning, all right, carnivorism works to an extent, and people with autoimmune conditions. Why is that? Oh, well, it's because we're taking out all these irritating foods. Autoimmune paleo does the same thing. And you know, there's other aspects too that we've talked about before. And then, why does veganism work? You can link to those as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've talked, we did an episode pretty much specifically on carnivore diets and transitioning out of them and why they can be beneficial. But the point being is that all of that is. Is accounted for and in this bioenergetic view, where we think that it does make sense to avoid irritating foods like you would in autoimmune paleo as far as alcohol and nuts and seeds and grains. However, that doesn't mean that all of the foods that are removed in autoimmune paleo approaches are always irritating or need to always be removed. Dairy is a good example there where it definitely can be but there are reasons for that that actually have to do with our metabolic function, where, for one, as far as the lactose goes, the ability to produce lactase depends on our gut health first. Well, not necessarily first, but it depends on our gut health. It also depends on our metabolism. So and the same goes for various other being able to break down various other components from our foods, the enzymes that are produced are all related to metabolism. So it's another way of saying that when our metabolism is functioning well, when we're producing a lot of energy, we can digest foods a lot more and or a lot better, and they're much less likely to cause issues. Dairy falls into that category. So while somebody who might not be digesting very well would benefit from taking it out, in the meantime, big picture, the goal would be to be able to bring that back in without an issue. And I've definitely seen that happen without an issue we both have, yeah, and people without immune conditions, particularly, too, which is noteworthy. You know.

Mike 41:18
The thing is, some people, you do put it back in and it doesn't work for them as well. It does some a lot of that is context dependent. And I've seen studies where they looked at, I think it was trypsin effectiveness in patients with autoimmune diseases. This was specifically rheumatoid arthritis, and then also looking at stomach acid. And people with rheumatoid arthritis tended to have small, small bacterial intestinal overgrowth, small intestine bacterial overgrowth. I've mixed that one up, and basically they had low trypsin activity in their small intestine, or basically ability to digest proteins well. So when you start looking at studies like that, and you start seeing things like that, it's, it's those are areas to definitely address. And with low stomach acid, well, those are areas to definitely address. And when you're having high breath, high breath test for methane or hydrogen, or all these different types of gasses that show a function of bacterial overgrowth or bacterial fermentation in small intestine, those are all definitely things to address. Part of the picture. It's going to be hard to eat enough food and get enough calories in. If everything you're eating is tremendous, it's going to be uncomfortable too. So it's definitely those are all. We're not disagreeing with any of that, but we also we want to get to a point where you have the elimination diet, and you're actually able to build up from there, where you you can start with elimination. And you know, some of that, some of the elimination can be very individual. You know, some people can start off and they tolerate dairy fines. Some of their foods that they start off with could be dairy and and fruit and things along those lines. Other people, they'll start off with, with carnivore, lower carb. And then they can work up the different foods, add them in, see how they feel and and build up slowly over time, because the other thing is to take once you dig yourself into the hole, it's not like you dug it into the hole in one day. Dug yourself into hole over over time, so it takes time to get back, and then from there, you add food slowly. You can try play with different macro ratios and see what works for this your individual context, while repairing the gut, eliminating latent infections as much as possible, and dealing with the energetic state of the body, any type of nutrient deficiencies. It's the whole system has to be when you break the system into where you have either heart disease or autoimmune diseases or cancer, or anything. These like number one, they are systemic issues. I think that's important to point out. When you have just the inflammation in your gut, it's not as far as the ulcerative colitis. You don't just have a colon issue. You have a systemic health problem. It's not it's not just one thing. And what we talked about in other in the previous episode was that all, all, almost all, autoimmune conditions are associated with a ton of other inflammatory chronic disease, conditions, heart disease, kidney disease, diabetes, etc, etc, etc. So you have to, we have to address it as a whole. You need to address all the different elements that can't just be Oh, I solved my gut and I eliminated the triggers, and I'm going to be okay. And depending, the other thing to keep in mind, though, is depending on how severe someone's autoimmune condition has gone and how far it has progressed, some degree of discipline and strictness in elimination diet may be required going forward for an extended period of time, especially around certain foods, for some people, it won't. So there's, there's a context to how far some people will progress in reversing the damage, and what they're going to be able to tolerate, um, and then also, because, at least in my experience, too, when you have an issue and then you first. Uh, start to get over the hump. For the issue, any type of small regression will be felt more strongly. So if you eat something, that triggers you before now, when you do it, as when you do it in the first, I guess, a couple months or maybe a year or so, when you're when you're recovering, when you regress back, you like you really feel it. But as you progress more, I guess the body becomes stronger and becomes more resistant, and things that would have taken you down before. Like, I think, what was it? Jordan Peterson was talking about his carnivore diet and how he ate apple cider vinegar one time, and it completely, like, crashed him. When you start to get stronger, coming from that place, the apple cider you're not going to feel anything. It's like, okay, apple cider vinegar. And so that's something that it takes time to build up, that that strength, and for some people might take longer than others. And for some people, the progression may may differ for us, depending on how far the severity of the disease is,

Jay Feldman 45:54
Well and that's that's the biggest problem I would see with the elimination type diet, the super low carb diet, is that instead of building that resilience, you're doing the opposite. You're basically building on the stress and creating further energy failure and structural deterioration. And as you said earlier, you have to keep avoiding more and more foods. You become intolerant to more and more foods you you know in that same thing with that Jordan Peterson example. So while there is quote on there's value to a quote, unquote elimination type diet, I would really look at it as just avoiding the foods that are very clearly triggering a response, like a negative response, or a flare or something other than that. I wouldn't really, I would focus much more on making sure you're getting enough carbs, making sure you're getting enough of the more saturated fats, getting enough protein, all the nutrients. I mean, I would only really try to avoid the ones that. I mean, it's worth testing different foods in general. I would say avoiding nuts and seeds and grains is going to be helpful. You know, probably avoiding alcohol in your in the situations is going to be helpful. And PUFA, of course, right? And beyond, we'll dig into why that specifically matters is, you know, especially in an autoimmune condition. I mean, really, in any condition, it's gonna be pretty important. But you know, when it comes to something like dairy and eggs, it's worth testing. I mean, if you really aren't digesting it well and you don't take it out, it might cause some you know, might be problematic. But in general, you know, that's, it's kind of just, it's definitely not solving anything, just avoiding those things. So

Mike 47:27
Yeah, that's not a cure. I think it's important to point out that you're eliminating a trigger. Doesn't necessarily make it a cure. Not at all. Yeah, yeah. It could. It could. Because the question is, is, are? And this kind of gets a little bit into semantics, because people will say, Well, if you add the foods back in and then you relapse and you didn't, then it's not a cure. The only way you'd be cured is if you but for some things, like, for example, if you took PUFA out, there's a doctor in Germany. I forget what his name is, but he was or there's a doctor in so the one in Germany, he removed linoleic acid from MS patients diets, and their diseases stopped progressing. And some of the people's diseases actually regressed, but when you add linoleic acid back in, it will make the disease basically progress again. That is, that's not an elimination diet. That is basic physiology.

Jay Feldman 48:21
Well, it's, it's, yeah, it's different from just removing a trigger, but instead, it's doing the basic things to support, again, the kind of energetic level metabolism, yeah.

Mike 48:30
Well, and then on the flip side, you have the doctor in England, dr, I think, is Alan ehrbringer, who is doing the low or zero starch diets for people with ankylosing spondylitis, and basically getting full remission of them, or almost full remission, that is not necessarily a cure either, because the idea behind it was that the starch was feeding the Klebsiella bacteria in the intestine, and when the when the bacteria in the intestine started to overgrow, there was an immune response to that bacteria. That bacteria. The idea is not to then to get to a point where eating pounds of starch every day, but the it's to get the body to be able to, number one, help clear the Klebsiella pneumoniae from the intestine, or Klebsiella period. I think there's different species that are associated with the disease, not just the pneumonia, I think there's oxytoc and other ones, but I would be able to clear out a lot of the Klebsiella, get your body to manage the infection better, be able to eat some starch here and there, if you have to, without, you know, going into full blown inflammation along the spine And and symptoms along those lines, that that would be the goal, and and while avoiding starch is going to be important, I just don't that's not the only cure for the situation. It just It won't make the disease get worse. But if you still have Klebsiella in the intestine, and you're mounting the immune response to it consistently, and. And anytime you eat starch, you're going back. I mean, I'm not telling people to then go eat starch, but what I'm saying is we need to, again, under address the Klebsiella in the intestine, and then address the body's ability to manage the Klebsiella in the in the intestine as well, and then to manage the immune response as well, so that it's not out of control to to the club's yellow.

Jay Feldman 50:22
Yeah, I think the biggest kind of to try to clarify it semantically a trigger is something that depends on somebody's state, where a certain food might be triggering at one time but not another, as opposed to something that is holistically or systematic, systemically problematic, something like linoleic acid, you know, polysaturated fats, and the anti nutrients and nuts and seeds, those are things that, yes, they could be triggering it sometimes or another at one time or another, but even if they're not triggering, they're going to be a problem long term. So I think that's kind of the difference. Is we're not focusing on just removing those things that might cause an issue at one point and not another, and just removing them forever, but instead focusing on the things that will systemically lead to improved metabolism and fixing fixing things on that level, along with that too, you had mentioned, like this idea of building resilience and that that should be happening, as opposed to kind of the other way around. And again, there's some, there's there's some semantic kind of issues here. Or, you know, sometimes when we're experiencing something that feels good, we can then tell when we're knocked down from it. So sometimes there can be an improved sensitivity, to an extent. But as you're saying, what we're looking for is things that will lead to a situation where you can handle greater amounts of stress without something like a flare up, in the case of an autoimmune condition, and that is something that should that we want to be working towards, and that I've seen, and you know, you mentioned the low starch diet for as, for example, frankellosing spondylitis, and I've, as you said, that makes sense if you've got this infection in The gut that's causing these, these problems. But it's not necessary if you resolve those other issues. I mean, it can be helpful short term, but then if you resolve these other issues, you should be able to have some starts without a problem and so and so. You know, seeing that in people with as so..

Mike 52:17
And to varying degrees, I think it's important to put to varying, to varying degrees at the baseline. We don't want progression of the disease. We don't want the as or rheumatoid arthritis to progress to replace joints and serious surgeries, right? That's the that's the bottom that's the bottom line that or that's like, the lowest point that we that we would shoot for. We don't want this to progress. We don't want it to get worse, but that's the minimum. We would want it to get to the point where we're regressing and you don't have these triggers hitting the spot as well. The real point would be to regress and avoid and avoid like not necessarily void, but be able to handle the stress or the triggers better, or even eliminate them as actual triggers, not in the sense that we're eliminating the food, but that we're eliminating the fact that the food is triggering, causing the it's triggering the effect.

Jay Feldman 53:08
Right.But the problem with just looking at anything that brings like a short term remission is still being a step in the right direction. Is you can do that with immunosuppressive drugs. You can do that with immunosuppressive supplements, like omega threes. You can do that with immunosuppressive diets, like low carb diets, that also happen to remove triggers that all those things I would say are going to make it worse in the long run. So I think I'm a little hesitant to say that anything that leads to that short term remission is necessarily going to be good in the big picture, beneficial in the big picture.

Mike 53:36
So I guess you want to make the stipulation of context and how, how, how are you going about it, and why it's working? Yeah, but I just wanted, I'd like to put it in, let in steps, because the first goal is to stop it all together, and then basically ladder up from there and move towards becoming more resilient over time, and then not having the problem overall, or or having, like, very small, very, very small, minor relapses, if you like, you go on the holiday and you, you know, you binge drink alcohol and eat street food for a week straight. It's like, well, now I got symptoms again, right, right?

Jay Feldman 54:11
Yeah, I didn't under I understand what you're saying. Now, I was talking about building resilience, and you were saying, yes, that is the long term goal, but that's not the first step.

Mike 54:18
I agree. Yeah, I'm saying I was trying to give a, like, a idea, or a ladder of, uh, how we're going to go about the resilience process, like, what, like the whole, the goal overall, is to build the resilience. But I want to stop everything, yeah, the inflammation with that, with everything to start, and even if, but obviously it depends on how you're going to do it, how you're going to go about.

Jay Feldman 54:40
But yeah, it is. It is. It is not just all of a sudden, you know, now you're gonna have that resilience. It does take time, step by step, and yes, first step is get out of that immediate, acute, inflammatory state that you're in. And that is what, yeah, what we would want to be seeing first let's do this. Let's contrast some of the approaches from. From these these views, to what we would actually be doing, they're like what we would actually view as ideal from the bioenergetic perspective. So let's start with the gut from from this perspective that intestinal permeability is is the major issue, and we just want to do everything that relieves the gut. Of course, there's a lot that we agree with there where intestinal permeability is still a legitimate issue, even if it's not a required precursor for an autoimmune condition. So we still see value in doing things that would help to prevent intestinal permeability or lead to some relief. There improvements there. However, I would caution against something like probiotics, which are recommended pretty often, not that, you know, there's just a lot of nuance there and and, you know...

Mike 55:47
We are just saying not to use them. You're just cautioning. I think that's the specific that is important to recognize that you are saying, I caution.

Jay Feldman 55:55
There's, there's a lot of really particular things to to get into there. So I'll refer to a previous episode that we did discussing probiotics, where just a lot of it can depend on particular strains, a lot of it is is relatively unknown in the research, and there's a lot that's being done there that can make things worse. And I've definitely seen that too, where probiotics can make these issues worse. So that's one thing to consider. You know, as we said, we agree with the idea of removing things that are going to be intestinally irritating, removing things that are high in anti nutrients, grains, nuts and seeds in particular. And you know, one thing that's that we've talked about and that we would focus on a little bit more is the supportive side to the gut, where having having enough of the saturated fats actually does a lot to heal the gut. We've talked about how that simulates bioproduction and that that's antimicrobial in the small intestine and supports gut motility. We've also, you know, and of course, the saturated fats themselves are antimicrobial, which is helpful for keeping things clear down there. Additionally, having enough carbohydrates, and we talk a lot about fruit being a really great source of those. That's not only because the carbohydrates are easily digestible, but also the fruits have polyphenols and bioflavonoids in them that are antimicrobial. So you've got this on one hand, easily digestible carbohydrates that are much less likely to be consumed by gut microbes, although you do have some fibers in there, but you have these other compounds that are antimicrobial, or selectively antimicrobial, to make sure that we are not feeding the harmful or pathogenic microbes that are in the intestines. So that makes fruits a really great source of carbohydrates that can support gut health and some roots and tuber I mean roots and tubers in general would fall in that category too. Again, some of that can depend on our ability to digest starch, and that can vary individually, but a lot of the same things apply with with roots and tubers. Do you want to add on to dietary things that just kind of the basics that would help to support the gut, keep inflammation down and help to reverse intestinal permeability.

Mike 58:08
I just want to say that I think the plant compounds also have a protective effect on the intestinal lining. Besides being anti microbial or bacteriostatic, or microbial static, or anything like that. I think that they have the some of them, or a lot of them, can have beneficial effects for the gut, in and of themselves, besides that, but also on the bacterial aspect. And then I think fibers from fruits and vegetables, specifically, at least ones that you can tolerate. You know, some, for example, for some people, raisins might completely destroy them, or dried apricots or something, but they do fine with bananas, or they do fine with like an apple or or berries or things like that. That's because of some of the fermentable fibers can cause issues for certain people, depending on what their gut bacteria is. But I think that the the fibers, in general, from fruits and specific vegetables can be pretty helpful, especially ones that you tolerate for dealing with gut issues. A lot more helpful than refined foods in general, refined in the sense of like pure granulated sugar, pure oils on our bleached, bromated flowers, or a lot of packaged foods, essentially, I think that they can make gut dysbiosis, or induce gut dysbiosis and make them worse if you already have them. So I think the fruits and vegetables are very helpful from that perspective. I think are particularly for the colon. I like to at least categorize that. Categorize things into you you have the small intestine and then the colon. I think the fats are helpful in the small intestine. As you mentioned, the saturated fats and the bile acids, which the saturated fats stimulate, are help with the small intestine. Fruits and vegetables for the colon, I think eating adequate protein is very important from that is digestible and comes with minimal amounts of minimal amounts of anti. Nutrients or or foods that would inhibit digestive enzymes or digestive function or irritate the intestine. So I'm not a fan of eating lots of beans and grains for protein or soy or any and I think that these manufactured faux animal protein products are, or, like the Impossible Burger, or anything along those lines, are just complete garbage to avoid. And usually I very skeptic. I've tried to be very, I guess, middle of the road about how I discuss things, in a sense. You know, it's not that you such strong words, but I really think that those, the faux products, are not worth it, even that I don't think they make any any sense at all. I think a lot of them are actually just, it's just straight toxic, like the ingredients and the components of them are not helpful if you want to, I I'm not a fan of the grains or beans thing, but if you wanted to do the vegetarian or vegan deal, and he wanted to do the grains or beans component, then I would just stick with the actual grains and beans prepared the proper way, instead of these lab made synthetic products combining all these different gums and soy protein isolate and soy and whatever else they're going to do. Gluten Protein. Yeah, gluten protein. I think those are all a pretty bad idea.

Jay Feldman 1:01:24
Especially if you've got an autoimmune condition. I mean, normally those vegetarian proteins and vegans proteins, they do actually use some of the most inflammatory proteins that exist, things like gluten as the primary protein source, so.

Mike 1:01:37
Vital wheat gluten as a primary ingredient. So I it's a bad I think it's a bad idea overall. And the reason I bring that up specifically is because I've seen some people that I've worked with where their doctor has recommended those as good alternative options to eating chicken or steak or fish or anything like that. And just It blows my mind. That's even a consideration, especially when you start reading the ingredients on some of these things, it's like, if you when you go in the hospital too, it's like tube feeding is vital wheat gluten and soybean oil and maltodextrin. It's like, It's not food that's that's literally what they feed. That's like a rat diet that they feed them in studies. Like, that's literally what they feed rats and studies. And I just don't think it's a good a good mix. I would stick even if you're going to do that with that, with the whole grains of beans, prepared properly, whatever. But I overall, I think the animal proteins are the better sources. They're more digestible. They come with a lot more nutrients that are digestible as well, and a lot less toxins in a lot of cases. So I think that's important. And then obviously, I think besides focusing on the foods that I just mentioned, avoiding a lot of problematic foods, like a lot of polyunsaturated fatty acids, is important. And I always like to make the stipulation that I think seafood is is helpful. I'm not necessarily a fan of eating a ton of heavily fatty cold water fish. I mean, if you're going to have sardines or salmon once in a while, I don't think is a terrible deal. But I don't think going out of out of your way to eat large amounts of fatty fish, like on a regular basis, on a daily basis, or or whatever, is a good idea overall. And that's that's even from the perspective of the research I've seen, where you basically see that, okay, you can maybe there's some benefit to some degree of fish oil. But in a lot of studies, high amounts of fish oil, like very high amounts of fish oil, have not shown to be very helpful. So if you want to be on the fish oil bandwagon that we currently have going on, and you agree with with the idea that the fish oils helpful, from the perspective of eliminating, competing with Omega six inflammatory mediators, prostaglandins, whatever, that's fine, but I still don't think even, even from the research I've seen in high amounts, doesn't seem to be helpful. So like 510, grams, three grams of EPA, DHEA, DHA a day, type of stuff doesn't seem to be like a good idea, but I leave it there because I there's so much discrepancy. I know that you're not a fan of it at all, but I do think besides that, the reason I and I guess we're tangential now, but the reason I think that it's important to stipulate there is because you're going to meet the requirement just by eating seafood, by and because the seafood itself has beneficial minerals and vitamins that are kind of hard to get from some of the land foods, and the protein from seafood is is pretty quality as well. So even if you're eating oysters on a weekly basis, having some muscles clams, eating squid or cod or soul or flounder or having some light tuna, you're still going to get some of those omega threes. But obviously my focus on those the seafood isn't necessarily the Omega three it's the nutrition that comes with it, and the importance of the nutrition that comes with the seafood, particularly the shellfish.

Jay Feldman 1:04:54
Yeah, yeah. A ton of vitamins and minerals, especially minerals, in those seafood. Just to clarify too. I mean, we'll discuss the Polytech fats, and specifically the Omega three reason, and also the Omega sixes that we already touched on a bit in a little while, because there's some uniqueness to them, especially in regard to the immune system and autoimmunity. And I think it's even more of a reason not to have them. But as you said, they are not entirely unavoidable. If you're eating good quality animal products, you're going and good quality seafood, even if it's low fat seafood, you will be getting small amounts of omega threes, which I think is fine. It is. It's kind of comes with the territory, but it's very small amounts to which, as you're saying, is very different from supplementing with it, and very different from large amounts. But to circle back, you know, we're, I want to come back to specifically gut health and how to dietary, how to support gut health, decrease intestinal permeability. Lead to some, you know, some rebalancing for the microbiome. We talked through some of those main things and why, sorting out the better forms of carbohydrates is really important, and the better forms of fats, some other things that are pretty helpful as far as protein specifically goes, would be the anti inflammatory amino acids, which which were are found in more of the connective tissue of the meat. So instead of just focusing on, you know, chicken breast and steak, the cuts that have much larger amounts of connective tissue and bone are going to have much higher amounts of these anti inflammatory amino acids, glycine, proline, hydroxyproline. There are others as well, and these are also found in collagen and gelatin proteins, which you can get as supplements if you're not getting them as much from foods. And these, all of those amino acids and also just using collagen, gelatin as a whole, have been shown to be very helpful as far as gut health goes and intestinal permeability goes. So getting enough of those, I think, is incredibly important. Some particular nutrients that are also helpful from that gut standpoint. One is zinc. You could get a supplement of zinc carnosine, which is generally shown Yeah, yeah, directly with with the gut and intestinal permeability. But you can also get zinc from, as you mentioned earlier, shellfish like or bivalves, in this case, like oysters, which have a lot of zinc in them. So I would always suggest going for food first, whether that's collagen or zinc or any of these other vitamins that we'll discuss, or minerals, but if, for whatever reason, you can't from your diet, using some supplements, in particular instances, can can work. So zinc and collagen would be a couple of important ones. B vitamins are another one that, again, we should be getting ideally from our diet, but supplementing with them additionally can help considerably with gut function. We talked about saturated fats again from the diet. Vitamin C is another one that we should be getting a lot of if we're eating a lot of high quality carbohydrates from fruit, which we'll also discuss why that's important, not only from the gut perspective, but from the energy, anti stress, pro immune. You know, immune supportive side of things. And again, all of those can can be pretty supportive gut wise. Yep.

Mike 1:08:09
I just want to add that, while gelatin, it can be helpful for some people, especially with gut issues, it can also cause problems for them. So that's something to keep in mind. I've seen a lot of people see that Ray Pete recommends a lot of gelatin and collagen, and then they have poor reactions to it, and they continue to try and do it. If you're having a poor reaction to it, you're probably not, you're not digesting it well, or you have something going on where you're not agreeing with it, or it's a bad source, or it's a bad source, yeah, and they're trying different sources. Is appropriate. But also, you know, recognizing that, look, I'm not tolerating this well and just being okay. I understand the theory, but sometimes the theory isn't playing out in reality. But essentially, if you're having problems with gelatin, like gelatin can be a source of problems for people. Another alternative would be collagen, hydrolysate, but that can also still cause issues for some people. So it's important to be aware of yourself and see what's going on as far as B vitamins go. I a lot of people, when they talk about all the importance of healing the intestinal lining, they talk about glutamine, they talk about vitamin C, and they could talk about zinc and on all these different components, but B vitamin B vitamins are extremely important for cell division and cell cell growth. And the intestinal lining is a very rapidly dividing structure that basically sloths off, or is constantly sloughing off cells all the time. So it's important to not have B vitamin deficiencies, and very important ones, which, and you can look up the side effects of different deficiency states, like pellagra, which is vitamin b3 Berry, Berry, which is b1 b1 but either way, regardless of the specific path, pathophysiologic name for the disease, having adequate B vitamins is really important for intestinal function. Or intestinal lining for metabolic function in general. So that's something to keep an eye on. The best sources, I think, are to get through food and trying to make sure that you can get you know if you can eat a decent amount of meat. And this is particularly why I think we think meat is important and seafood, because they're high in these vitamins, white meat, chicken and white meat, Turkey, particularly the breast, which is what I would usually recommend people to eat, because the thighs are especially for most conventional sources. Pasture chicken is pretty expensive. So is pasture Turkey compared to conventional it's it's a lot more expensive, and it's also harder to find. Yeah, the thighs and the the other fattier meats, or cuts of these animals has a high amount of PUFA, so we recommend the breast, but the breast for these doesn't have as much vitamins and minerals. It's got some it's not this to the same degree as seafood or meat, and that's why the preference is for seafood and meat. So I think then obviously, like organ meats, are very high in B vitamins. I think for some people, the supplements can actually cause issues. So that's another area to keep in mind. And there are supplements available on the market that you can put on topically, and which I think is very helpful. This is not a plug for anybody but Georgie, or hate it from the repeat forum, does produce a topical B vitamin supplement that I think is helpful. And I think health natural has a topic, one that can be applied topic as well. And I've used both of them, and I appreciate the product. There's no we don't have any affiliates or anything like that, but it's just, it can be helpful. And then I'll put the links in the show notes, yeah, and that's if you're not tolerating them orally, because taking them orally can help as well. And then the last piece I wanted to talk about was the importance of trying to get most of everything from food, at least there's one more thing after but getting everything from food, I think is really important. A lot of times I think supplements can cause problems, especially when you're high dosing one thing. And I've, I've done this to myself, like taking really high doses, or not really high doses, but having my dietary source of zinc, and then taking zinc by itself, I didn't really feel right, and I had to stop doing I was doing it for a little while. So I've tend to found that taking individual things can give me weird effects, especially if you're taking them in Super physiologic or a high doses, doses that you normally wouldn't see in food or in your diet. So and I whereas if I've eaten oysters versus eating versus taking a capsule of zinc, I don't feel bad when I eat the oyster. So I think food is important. The other thing I want to point out too is that with a lot of the starch options, with a lot of the grains and things like white rice. Another reason I think it's important to avoid them is they're relatively nutrient poor. And a lot of them that do have nutrients, it's added fortified vitamins and minerals and and iron shavings and things like that, which I think are actually probably best to avoid overall. And the end this is, I think, more of a check mark in the box for fruit, where fruit comes with, especially fruit juice or concentrated forms of fruit come with a like a decent amount of vitamins and minerals, besides the protective plant compounds, and they also have sugar or sucrose, which many people digest pretty well. Some people can't really digest starch so well, and then sucrose obviously becomes the main source so glucose and fructose, and glucose and fructose in free form, yeah, but I tend to think that the free form sugars are easier to digest overall, compared to starch, compared to starship, because starch is essentially chains of glucose, where the glucose, where the sucrose, is just glucose, and one glucose and one fructose down together, and then obviously the free forms, so they don't really require as much digestion. So I think that can be helpful, especially with gut issues. And that's, I know you're going to get into the importance of the fruit and vegetable, or, I guess, the fruits over grains. But I think that's a strong check mark for fruits and fruit juice, specifically, 100% fruit juice, not from concentrate. You have, you have a lot of vitamins and minerals coming with the sugar. Whereas, if you were having white rice, there's some but, you know, not quite as much as fruit, a little bit more limited, and you have a starch. So I think the fruit, overall, on paper, and at least in my experience, is superior. And even from my personal experience, I feel a lot more even keeled, and my blood sugar is regulated easier. I have less ups and downs when I have the fruit, less sluggish in my digestion when I use fruit or fruit juice than if I was to eat a lot of eat a lot of grains, part starch, heavy grains.

Jay Feldman 1:14:49
Yeah, yeah. There's, I mean, in a lot of anyone who's coming from the functional mess and paleo side, or if they're coming from just the general low sugars. Side. You know, we're cautioned against the sugar that's in fruit. In a minute. I'll get to why I think it's so important. But we've also talked about why this does not cause the disaster for blood sugar that it's said to in a previous episode of the podcast in more depth. So I'll link to that. We'll talk about it a little bit now. I did want to mention, as far as collagen and gelatin go, just going back to that, you mentioned, some people have issues with them as supplements, which I've seen that too. If you're trying different sources, then that's an issue. If you've tried getting it from food, which I think is the best place to get it, whether you're doing some sort of a bone broth, you're doing some sort of meat that has a bone in it, or is just high in connective tissue, like the roasts and the shanks and things that take much longer to cook because they have to break down the connective tissue. If you're I think that's always the best source. So I would try that too. You can also use, if you are doing, you know, supplementary.

Mike 1:15:52
Or like, a fish, like a like, if you use cook the whole fish, yeah, even if you don't drink the broth, if you just eat the meat, you still get a decent amount, especially like Lego lamb or something. Or like, if you have the whole fish with the head in there, if you eat the meat from there, you're still getting a decent amount of amino acids. Yeah.

Jay Feldman 1:16:09
It sounded like you were talking about fish, and then you said Lego lamb, and it sounded like it talks about that type of fish.

Mike 1:16:15
No. Those are both options that, like we do, they'll we'll have my dad will go fishing. We'll bring back a fish. They'll cook the whole fish all together, um, obviously, take out a lot of the guts, or, like, we'll buy a leg of lamb. It'll have the bone and everything in there. And then we'll, we'll either put it slow, cook it, or we'll put it in the oven, and you're still getting a decent amount of of those collagenous proteins. And you can see that as even with the fish, if you just have the fish and some of the juices that you cooked it in, even if it was pan, pan fried, if you leave it in the fridge, it'll it'll congeal, it'll become a gel, gelatinous substance. And it's basically, there may be some fat component there, but a lot of that is actually the proteins coming out.

Jay Feldman 1:16:54
Right? Yeah. And so, I mean, drinking that the broth that's coming with any of those foods would be, yeah, ideal. But even if you're not, you're still getting some amount, as you were saying. Also, if you know those things aren't an option, the collagen or gelatin supplements are not working, you can use glycine on its own as a supplement. Again, this would be which can help with stomach acid production and various other aspects of gut health, like intestinal permeability and just having a general anti inflammatory effect, yep, and bioproduction, taurine is also good for both of those things too. So you know, those are some options too, from the supplement side that can be used in in the right context. All right, that's going to wrap up part two of this autoimmunity series, as we discussed in today's episode, gut health is a huge factor when it comes to autoimmune conditions, but if we address the gut and don't address the other factors that affect our metabolism, then we'll still be left with the same high stress hormones, chronic inflammation and low thyroid situation, which is the same conditions that lead to the autoimmune state in the first place. So in part three of this series, we'll be discussing how you can fix a metabolic function in autoimmune conditions using nutrition as well as certain supplements that can help with autoimmune conditions. If you enjoyed today's episode, then please leave a like or comment if you're watching on YouTube or a review or five star rating on iTunes. All of those things really do a ton to help support the show. To check out the show notes for today's episode, head over to Jay Feldman wellness.com/podcast where you can take a look at the studies and articles and anything else that we referenced throughout today's episode, and if you are dealing with any autoimmune conditions, if you're dealing with any other low energy symptoms like chronic cravings and hunger, fatigue, chronic pain, weight gain, brain fog, hormonal imbalances, gut inflammation or other gut issues, as we discussed throughout today's episode. Or if you're doing a poor sleep or any other low energy symptoms or chronic health conditions, then head over to Jay Feldman, wellness.com/energy, where you can sign up for free energy balance, mini course, where I will walk you through the main things that you want to focus on, as far as diet and lifestyle are concerned, so that you can maximize your cellular energy. And I'll also walk you through why maximizing your cellular energy is the key to resolving these symptoms and chronic health conditions. So to sign up for that free energy balance mini course, head over to Jay Feldman, wellness.com/energy, and with that, I will see you in the next episode.