Dr Pedram Shojai
Today I share changes in our thinking around testing the microbiome and what we’re finding to be more effective for patients.
HERE IS A LINK to the gut testing package I mentioned– it’s at a super discount right now during the event and I wanted to make sure you could take advantage of it. It’s a no-brainer.
Listen to the episode on Spotify here or on your favorite podcast platform and check out the Urban Monk Academy here.
Podcast transcript:
Gut testing podcast
Dr Pedram Shojai: [00:00:00] Hey folks, welcome back. Dr. Pedram Shojai, the Urban Monk podcast, uh, here talking about something that has come up recently and, uh, needs talking about. Um, there has been a lot of shifting in my thinking when it comes to the treatment. of gut health. And there was so much information that came out a couple years ago, two, three, four years ago, all this stuff on the microbiome was just like, Holy crap, look at this.
The microbiome is everything. The microbiome, you know, it’s going to change all of medicine and revolutionize everything we do. And that remains the case. Let me be clear, the microbiome is incredibly relevant to everything that we are learning about inflammatory pathways and conjugation and even mitochondria and the, you know, the output of energy in the gut and all sorts of really cool things that you hopefully learn through the interconnected series.
Uh, but I have found in my clinical practice. That there is a bit more nuance [00:01:00] and I wanted to share it just because I think a lot of people are out there testing their guts, testing their guts and trying to figure out what’s happening with their microbiome a little too soon. And I want to qualify what I’m saying by saying, you know, we tried this too, right?
It’s, you know, medicine is all about new things coming up and innovations and saying, holy crap, this is amazing. Let’s test everybody. Here’s the problem with that. And in, you know, all transparency, guilty as charged. We thought this was amazing too. Right. But when you take a person off the street and you sample their microbiome, you are.
In most likelihood, uh, anyone living in the modern American European ecosystems, going to find yourself a dumpster fire of disharmony, imbalance, pathogenic bacteria, all sorts of things that are, uh, relevant to saying, Oh, wow, that’s, that’s not good. Right? And then what happens is, is as a [00:02:00] good doctor, you then say, well, shoot, let’s, uh, let’s fix that.
Let’s give you oregano oil for this, or, you know, this for that. And let’s give you some probiotics and let’s try to adjust this ecosystem, uh, until we can bring it back into balance. And. Having spoken with a number of doctors who have been, you know, down this road for many years now Do you get mixed results with that?
And I want to speak to that because I know there’s a lot of frustration out there Amongst patients amongst, you know listeners people, you know Listening to all the podcasts who are trying to do the right thing by health and are trying to take all these expensive Probiotics and trying to you know, fix things.
I’ve been working on a new approach that I’m seeing better And I can corroborate with a number of practitioners who have also shifted their approach in this direction. And, uh, I think we could all agree this seems to be working better, right? And so what is it? [00:03:00] Imagine walking down the road with a big thorn in your shoe.
And you’re like, wow, that really sucks. That really sucks. And you keep taking off the shoe and bandaging the foot. You keep cleaning the wound. You keep doing everything you can to fix the wound on the foot. And you never take the thorn out of the shoe. That’s the metaphor I want you to hold in mind here as we talk about the methods we’ve been using to try to heal the microbiome.
What is the thorn? Well, it could be broccoli for you. It could be egg yolks. Like it is for me. It could be chicken. It could be gluten. It could be dairy. The point is we have all because of leaky gut and gut permeability and all the things that I’ve talked about a million times on the show and in my series, um, created a whole slew of sensitivities all the way down to allergies to particular foods that happen to be in our diets.
That [00:04:00] happened to be all around compound that with the glyphosate and the pesticides and all the crap and the additives in the food, our gut lining gets compromised. Our immune system gets activated and we have these crazy inflammatory cascades happening around our guts. And in my clinical experience, in my life experience, uh, Start to see more and more that it’s almost impossible to heal a gut if you keep hurting the gut.
And so my thinking has changed dramatically on this. I’m seeing much better results with this new line of thinking in that for new patients coming in. First thing I want to see is a gut permeability assay. I want to see a test on the gut barrier to see specifically what is wrong with this individual gut barrier.
Um, and whether it’s long term or short term, how long this been going on, and I want to see food sensitivities [00:05:00] because. And, you know, we’ll look at the top 22, uh, for most folks who just want to get in and, and, and do it on the cheap. And then there’s more extensive ones, obviously you can always spend 20, 50, 000 on tests, uh, and get more data.
Um, but that’s not necessarily the path I recommend pretty much any patient. Um, and what I have been seeing. With this is that once you find the foods someone is allergic to, and you figure out specifically where the gut barrier has been compromised, and you fix those things, take out the foods that are harming this individual and fix the gut barrier.
Very specifically, different algorithms, depending on if, was it zonulin, was it candida? I mean, there’s a lot of areas with that, that you have to get a little granular on. But if you fix those things and you avoid damaging the gut lining for a few weeks, a few months, up to six months in some individuals, then [00:06:00] you take a look at the microbiome, you have a very different picture, and then you.
start fixing said microbiome balance. You start making the micro adjustments and it starts to stick. Things start working better. You’ve taken the thorn out of the shoe. And so I really want to speak to this because I know there is an incredible amount of frustration. amongst my listeners, amongst people in this health sphere, people are out there doing all this stuff and trying so hard to feel better and taking 300 a month in supplements.
And I don’t know if those probiotics worked or not. You won’t. If you’re still eating tomatoes and you didn’t know you were allergic to tomatoes. So the moral of this story that I really wanted to emphasize here is that you should test and not guess. Test, test, and don’t guess. Now there’s [00:07:00] a free way to test.
It’s called the elimination provocation diet. You remove all the big bads, the gluten, the dairy, the corn, the soy, the sugar, the artificial sweeteners, and you know, depending on who you talk to the coffee, obviously the alcohol. And so there’s a long list of things that you just say, okay, look, it’s off. I’m not going to touch this stuff for 30 days.
Uh, See how you change, see how you feel. Everyone I know has done the elimination provocation diet, uh, bar none, unless they’re just not eating enough calories, feel better coming off that thing. And then the trick to it is you add the foods that you took away back one at a time and wait three to four days in between because there’s a latency period on the reactions that you would have on some of these foods and see.
And if you go four days after eating eggs and you feel fine and you have no eczema and you have no headaches, you have no mood swings, and you don’t have, you know, loose stools and all things [00:08:00] that may come from a food sensitivity, happy days, eggs are back on the menu. Next food, next food, next food. So it takes at least a couple months to do this right.
Um, but you’re not really spending any money because you’re spending money on food and arguably you’re spending money on, um, simpler ingredients, right? Whether or not your grocery bill goes up and down a few bucks is irrelevant compared to, you know, a battery of tests that would, you know, break the bank and, you know, make it a lot harder.
Now. The interim solution that I found, and I wanted to share this with you, is I’ve been doing a lot of business with a particular lab that I like a lot because I’m like, man, I love this report. It’s really helping. It’s giving us clinically relevant information. We’re helping people. And so I was able to lean into the lab, create a deep discount.
for our students, our listeners, people that really want this [00:09:00] to get the gut permeability and the food sensitivity test. The retail is like 350 bucks. And we’re doing a special event where I am reintroducing the interconnected series out there, but I would be remiss not to give you the same. Discount and offer even if you’ve seen the series and come and gone.
And so if you’re interested in it, I got the whole thing for less than 300 bucks. Um, you can’t get this outside. You couldn’t get this for retail itself. And the way we did it is it goes through our system and you, uh, it just orders it. And then I have one of my health coaches help you go through the results.
with a plan to help you down that path. Uh, really important because it’s very easy to get overwhelmed with this. And if you don’t know what to do, you won’t do it and you won’t do it right. And you won’t get results. So I just wanted to extend that to my listeners because it’s a screaming deal Um, you know, in, [00:10:00] in the real world, you’d have to go pay a doctor a few hundred bucks and then pay for the test.
And then, you know, it couldn’t, you couldn’t get this for less than eight, 900 bucks. And so for under 300, you get the testing and a consultation with a health coach to go through it and make sure that you know what to do. Um, uh, if that is. Interesting. Just go to the urban monk. com, go to podcasts and go to this podcast.
And I’ll put the link right there. I just wanted to make sure that that was shared with everybody and not just the new people coming in, seeing interconnected for a limited screening here. And the moral of the story here is that inflammation is like a wildfire. And once it takes off, it’s bad news. So how do you get out ahead of it?
The first thing is you take away the fire, you take away the fuel. And if the fuel is a food you didn’t know you were eating that was causing it, man, you got to get on that. You got to get on that really quick because that right there [00:11:00] will prevent all of the other healing. It’ll keep all the supplements that you’re taking from absorbing and getting to what they need to do.
You’re just wasting a lot of time and money if you have an inflamed gut and you’re trying to fix the system. while still damaging the system. I hope that makes sense. I hope, uh, for those of you who’ve been struggling with your health, you get where I’m coming from here because that little hinge could swing a big door and change a lot of things for you and health.
And I just needed to get out ahead of it and make sure you heard this and you start acting. Whether you go take a deal with the lab or you do the elimination provocation diet, the moral of the story is figure out. What your body is saying it doesn’t like, and stop giving that to your body. Things will change once you understand that and once you start acting on that.
I’ll see you in the next one.
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