- Okay, real quick like, I wanna talk about Dr. K.
- Yes.
- The giveaway that we're giving away.
- We are giving away six different programs of his
from Hashimoto's Disease to gut health, cognitive decline,
autoimmunity, and one on saving your brain.
We're also offering a 40% discount.
You can use the codename Bob and Brad.
Everything is down below in the description box.
And, without further ado, here's Dr. Kharrazian.
- Yeah.
(upbeat guitar)
- Welcome, my friends to the Bob and Brad podcast.
My name is Mike Kenneth
and I'm a physical therapist assistant.
Our guest today is Dr. Datis Kharrazian.
Dr. Kharrazian is a Harvard Medical School-trained
and award-winning clinical research scientist,
academic professor,
and world-renowned functional medicine healthcare provider.
He develops evidence-based models to treat
autoimmune, neurological, and unidentified chronic diseases
with non-pharmaceutical applications.
His clinical models of evidence-based medicine are used
by several academic institutes and thousands
of healthcare providers throughout the world.
Dr. Kharrazian is an associate clinical professor
at the Loma Linda University School of Medicine.
So without further ado, here is Dr. Kharrazian.
Let's talk a little bit more.
We talked about leaky gut a little bit.
Can you get a little more in-depth on it
and what are causes of it?
- Yeah, so leaky gut was something that naturopath's had
in their training in terminology
since the beginning of naturopathy
right back in the 1900s.
They always believed you can have a leaky gut,
which means your intestines have, basically, these
like little microvilla and they open up.
Just think of like holes in the gut, intestines
get inflamed and things open up.
And that was kind of like a folklore thing that happened.
And then a guy named Fasano identified the
molecule that opens these things up.
And then they were able to cause leaky gut in animals
with the singlet molecule zonulin.
Fasano was also at Harvard Medical School
in the gastroenterology department.
And since then, it's like, okay, leaky gut's real.
And now they're actually developing a drug that's
in a phase three clinical trial to, to stop leaky gut.
And I'm pretty convinced
once they have that drug finalized and proven,
which it's certainly looks like it's going to be,
then the whole world's gonna be using the term
leaky gut in conventional medicine, right?
- Yeah.
- Until, until the drug's made, no one's gonna talk about
leaky gut in conventional medicine
because it's not really-- in the scientific literature
in the gastroenterology field, immunology field,
autoimmune field, there's tens
of thousands of papers on-- on it.
They just don't call it leaky gut.
They're starting to now,
they just use the term intestinal permeability.
- Yeah. I, I think I heard it like five years ago
or so was the first time I heard leaky gut, but yeah
I think it's getting a little more mainstream now.
- It's starting to get a little bit mainstream
but it should be, it should be like breaking, breaking news.
Like this is, this is really important.
This is linked to many chronic diseases,
inflammatory diseases, brain-gut access, inflammation,
chronic diseases, cardiovascular risk, predictive models
for strokes, heart attacks, all types of things.
Right? So survivability in the hospital,
these are all linked to intestine permeability.
Long COVID now linked to intestine permeability,
as is one of the variables and factors.
So we all have this potential
in our lifespans to have our guts develop permeability
or think of it like as holes being opened
up in the gut and then healing pretty, pretty quickly.
And some people have leaky gut that stays
on-- ongoing 'cuz their diet's terrible right?
You can, you can cause leaky gut really easily with people.
And it's, you can just cause leaky gut
by the standard American diet, which is very high fat
very high sugar, very inflammatory foods,
processed foods that that's guaranteed.
If you wanted to create a human study to cause
leaky gut put them on the standard American diet.
You would see a lot of them have leaky gut, but really what
what prevents leaky gut is having microbiome diversity
like exercise changes your microbiome movement, fibers
like people that eat vegetables, different fibers
the more diverse your fibers are,
The more product you have more microbiome
diversity you have, less likely develop leaky gut.
The less processed food, inflammatory foods
a person eats, these all things, protect the gut
from not developing the so-called permeability, leaky whole-
whole gut pattern, right?
Now you take someone who just eats processed food.
Doesn't eat vegetables.
Doesn't move, is sedentary lifestyle.
I mean, they're likely to have intestinal permeability.
Now, a lot of them get leaky gut
but that's not necessarily what causes all the problems.
So when you get leaky gut, there's a few things that happen.
There's there's when you look at the gut,
the very top is just a lining of the gut, the gut barrier.
Okay, and underneath the gut barrier down here is
is a part of the immune system, the gut immune system.
And underneath this gut barrier here, you have things
like natural killer cells and T cells
and they're ready to respond to anything that's foreign.
Okay, so normally your intestines have these
little tight junctions, like very narrow
that little digested food particles can go through
but if there's holes and the guts open up
then undigested food particles can just go through the gut.
So normally if you eat something,
it-- you're gonna have to have your enzymes break that
down from proteins to the peptides, to amino acids.
And then there's small enough where
the molecular weight's very, very small as they can go
through those little tiny holes in the gut barrier.
But when you get leaky gut, then
just the proteins go through.
And that means the system starts to react
against them and starts to make antibodies
against them and starts to react against them.
And this is where people develop food sensitivities.
So one of the, you know, most common presentations
people start about leaky gut, as they're like, "Hey
I'm starting to get bloated
and distended and feel awful with, with all these new foods
now that I used to, I used to be able to drink milk.
And now I can't drink milk."
Or other things are, right?
And that's where their gut barrier opened up.
Undigested food particles just have to react together.
You know, blood test you'll see antibodies
against these food proteins which means
they definitely developed not an allergy
but a food sensitivity, right?
They're not gonna get anaphylaxis from it and can't breathe
but they get inflamed from it.
So that's the difference between an allergy
and a food sensitivity.
So they develop food sensitivities.
And in a chemical model, we measure food sensitivities
with what's called an IgG antibody
which is different than an allergy, which is IgE, right?
So food.
So intestinal permeability
leaky gut develops food sensitivity, okay?
And these food sensitivities then get more progressive
and they're inflamed.
They eat something that they normally eat all the time
like milk in their coffee or whatever it may be.
If it's dairy or something you react to.
And all of a sudden their bodies inflamed.
Now these immune systems in the gut create inflammation.
These inflammatory meat eaters get
into what's called the mesentery complex system in the gut.
And then they spread all
throughout the lymph nodes in the body.
Now there's inflammation throughout the entire body.
Now they have pain in their joints, pain in their limbs,
their back injuries now have stirred up, their brain injury
they had years ago, I don't know playing volleyball
or football or something is now reactivated.
These inflammatory cells are turned on.
Now they have their neurological symptoms again,
they can't focus.
They can't think, well for some people
their harsh models turns something on
with their immune system starts
to attack their thyroid gland.
So that's the model of leaky gut.
These intestinal permeability patterns
or these holes opens up, things that get
through, the immune system reacts against them.
The inflammatory response become systemic.
And that triggers on -- adds--
add fuels to the fire, wherever the fire is.
So that's leaky gut and you can test for it.
You can measure things called zonulin to see
if you have it.
You can check something like zonulin antibodies
and the worst, the worst part of it
is something called endotoxemia
which is where leaky gut gets really, really bad.
So let me explain that to you.
This is important when you have
when you look at the gut barrier, you know
some people may have heard the word dysbiosis.
- Yeah.
- Bio: bacteria, dys being dysfunctional.
So dysbiosis means you have more bad bacteria
than good bacteria, right?
So if you eat, if you eat unhealthy for your gut
meaning you don't have enough fiber,
you don't have enough plant foods, and so forth.
Right? And you have a lot of processed saturated fats
and all these things, you can then develop dysbiosis, right?
So sodas and fast food all the time.
And no real vegetables is gonna put someone's
bacteria populations to have what are called more
unhealthy bacteria population.
And these unhealthy bacteria populations is basically
remember we, we talked
about back -- probacteria in the gut, releasing molecules
like single agents like serotonin, dopamine, GABA.
Well, they, they release inflammatory chemicals.
That's why they're bad.
Okay. So these-- this-- this-- this change
in dysbiosis, where you have more unhealthy bacteria
unhealthy being
that they create more inflammatory messengers
that cause inflammation throughout the body,
They're in higher proportions.
Now, if someone has leaky gut, those singling molecules get
through and they get into the blood stream.
'Cause as soon as they get into the gut
the gut has a pathway called the mesentery flex
which is a pathway for it to get
into the entire lymph nodes throughout the whole body.
So now these singling molecules that cause inflammation
in the gut get into the bloodstream and it's, it's known as
lipoolysaccharide, polysaccharide LPS.
An LPS gets into the body.
And then, and throughout the body
you have these immune receptors called TOLAC receptors.
And there's one called TL four TOLAC receptor four.
And these LPS bacteria bind to them.
And it, soon as they bind, they cause inflammation.
So there's papers showing that people that have endotoxemia
like leaky gut with this LPS you can measure it too.
You measure blood LPS.
You shouldn't have this bacteria in the blood.
Okay. If you do, it's called endotoxemia.
So you, you measure that and that's high in the blood,
that's been linked to cardiovascular disease,
'cuz that destroys the blood vessels.
It's been linked
to major depressive disorder where they don't
they can't get out of depression.
They, they won't respond to any of the antidepressants.
It's been linked to triggering
autoimmune diseases throughout the body.
It's been linked to chronic pain, fibromyalgia,
all these various things.
So this is why like years ago,
like to go see, naturopathy, I'm really, really sick.
They're like, we're gonna get you off all bad foods.
We're gonna put you
on a fast, we're going give you some things to
support your microbiome and gut.
And these people did this
and all these stories like, oh my God, they were reversed
my inflammatory condition.
The first time in life, they felt better.
And back in the 1900s,
nature crafts were doing this all the time
with like, that's obvious.
And but now I think medicine's scientists definitely caught
up, but medicine is now trying to work on a blocker.
It's not gonna, and that's only gonna work
on selected types of leaky gut not to get too detailed
but it's still gonna be very beneficial
to many chronic diseases when it comes out.
- How common is leaky gut?
Like, do you have a, like one
in four people or something like some stat or no?
- It's-- so here's the thing that there haven't been
studies where they looked at a healthy population
and they go, okay, this percentage of people.
So it would just be a guess.
- Yeah. Okay.
And then when you talk to practitioners
they're not seeing regular parts of the population.
They're seeing people who have symptoms.
Right?
- Right.
- So they're not feeling well, so they're going to see them.
But I'm gonna guess, I'm gonna guess
- How much-- how many people do you see for leaky gut?
I guess probably a better question.
- Well, I worked
with autoimmune disease patients a lot so it's it's, it's
it's the majority of them, but it's not all of
'em not all of 'em, not all of 'em have it.
- Right.
- And I would say, yeah, I mean
you could easily guess one outta four, one out of five.
Now, if you have symptoms of bloating
distension with more and more foods, if you eat foods
and you feel inflamed, your body hurts all the time.
And when you take a break from certain foods, that's a clue.
You may have leaky gut.
If you've ever gone on fast
and you feel a lot better and your body doesn't hurt
and not as inflamed as much, that's a big clue.
You may have leaky gut.
Cause the main trigger
to leaky gut is gonna be dietary proteins.
- Okay.
- So something's
what's gonna trigger leaky gut is there's holes
in the gut, food proteins that aren't digested are gonna get
through, and they're gonna trigger the immune
response to cause inflammation.
So when you see significant reactions to foods
whether foods cause massive brain fog
or cause massive bloating
or have massive distension or cause massive distinction
or cause massive joint pain, that's strong indication
you have leaky gut, 'cause normally food proteins
shouldn't be such an immune trigger.
Right.
- Right.
So.
- Yeah.
- I know it's a little different
cuz FODMAP is based off fermentable carbohydrates
but does FODMAP relate-- like foods relate to leaky gut?
- No, FODMAP's a different mechanism.
There's a, there's another condition called
small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.
And what happens in this condition is bacteria.
Like, you know where we have
we have these bacteria, large intestine, the microbiome
and we have some bacteria in the small intestine.
What separates the small intestine
large intestine is the valve of the ILU valve.
And what, what, what happens with small intestinal bacterial
overgrowth is bacteria from large intestine moves
into the small intestine through this valve abnormally.
- Oh, okay.
- And now these bacteria species are
in the small intestine that shouldn't be there.
And these bacteria immediately respond
to fermented foods and sugars.
So people that have FODMAP, as soon
as they eat any kind of sugars or fibers
they get severe distension and bloating.
'Cuz they have bacteria that feeds off them
in they're small intestine that shouldn't be there.
- Right. So it's still-- okay.
There's still bloating and distension of the stomach
but that-- different mechanisms.
- Yes. But many people with intestinal--
many people with small intestinal, bacterial
overgrowth have been shown to end up with leaky gut, too.
Because those bacteria that are in the small intestine
do create an inflammatory response
when they're triggered by food.
Since they're getting exposed in that early state to them.
- Right.
- So you get a combination of both.
- Okay. Yeah.
I had-- I have experienced--
And so does Bob with FODMAP
'Cause I had a lot of brain fog
and gut distension before I cleaned my diet up a lot.
- Yep.
- Lot of stuff you mentioned is relatable for me.
- Yeah. I mean you're not alone.
You know, we get older or we, we, we lose our brain cells.
We get more neurodegenerative.
We lose some of our brain-gut access.
Our immune system starts to age.
We start to lose our immune tolerance.
We start to react and things.
But these are things that then make us sick,
and then makes us have symptoms.
And then like, yeah, at some point in your life
you may have to make some dietary change
of how your body's responding to function better.
At some point in your life, you may
you may wanna take some nutraceuticals
whether it's anti-inflammatories or something else
like maybe you wanna, you know
take things to support blood flow
and circulation because your vascular dynamics are changing
or some point you may wanna do these things to
to function better, right?
And this is where the "rural"
and the functional medicine came in the world,
that the functional medicine is another specialty
in healthcare.
It's one that I'm involved with
and it's like, okay, we're not, we're not disease-focused.
We're we're focused on function.
What's not functioning for you?
Well, I'll get bloated in my stomach all the time.
Great. Let's figure out why.
- Right.
- Yeah.
You, you have bacteria in your small intestines.
Shouldn't be there.
Let's put you on this diet.
You know, let's see if we can change your micro--
Let's see if we can change your microbiome
richness and diversity, let's measure
and see what your bacteria populations are.
Let's see what food's in your stool.
Let's see if you need to take some enzymes, you know,
and the goal is really just to improve a person's function.
So another person may come in, they may have like fatigue
and shakiness and lightheaded and
you look thoroughly at that and then you find out,
okay, well what's your fun--
You're not functioning
while your energy level is fluctuating.
And guess what?
You're hypoglycemic,
you're going too long without eating.
And you can't have a smoothie for lunch.
It's way too much simple sugars and now you're crashing.
Let's have you add some more fiber and protein.
And that goes along without eating and you know,
and then all of a sudden their function comes back
and now their depression, anxiety, and fatigue is all gone
but they didn't get a drug for depression.
They didn't get a drug for anxiety.
They just fixed your blood sugar problem.
- Right. They're looking
at the origins instead of treating symptoms.
- Yeah. And that's the world of functional medicine.
- Alright.
So where can people find you at,
on your websites, and where can they get your books?
- So my website is DrKNews, D R K N E W S .com, Dr.
K. news, 'cuz my last name's Kharrazian
and that's really hard to spell.
So we use Dr. K News and then I do have--
I do have free content on that,
including a Gluten in the Brain book.
So if there's a free online Gluten in the Brain book,
want check that out for listening.
And we have lots of podcasts and videos
and information trying to educate the public and the goal of
the website is to, you know, to educate the public
and let them eventually know about the books I've written.
I've written two books, one on the brain,
on the thyroid, and we have some online courses
on the brain, thyroid, food sensitivities, allergies,
to try to get information out to people,
but hopefully it can be a good educational source
for those that are interested in these topics.
- Alright.
Well thank you for joining us.
- Okay.
Thanks, Mike.
It was a pleasure and talk to you soon.
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