Gut Feelings: The Microbiome-Disease Connection

Ever wondered why you can't shake that chronic health issue despite trying everything? The answer might be swimming in your gut right now. Your microbiome—that complex ecosystem of bacteria, viruses, fungi and more—isn't just handling digestion; it's a mission control center for your entire body's health.

When your gut exists in what scientists call "eubiosis" (a beautiful balance of diverse microorganisms), you feel great. But when dysbiosis strikes and that balance tips, the effects cascade throughout your body. This imbalance doesn't just cause digestive discomfort—it can trigger everything from skin conditions like eczema and psoriasis to autoimmune disorders, depression, and even cardiovascular disease.

The modern diet's lack of nutrient density has made achieving optimal gut health increasingly difficult. Our ancestors enjoyed diverse, fiber-rich foods that naturally supported their microbiomes, while many of us now require supplementation with probiotics, prebiotics, and targeted nutrients to restore what's missing. Those magical short-chain fatty acids like butyrate—produced by healthy gut bacteria—provide anti-inflammatory benefits that can heal the gut barrier, reduce systemic inflammation, and potentially improve conditions from endometriosis to brain fog.

What makes this understanding so revolutionary is recognizing the interconnectedness of body systems. When your gut health improves, your skin clears, your mood stabilizes, and your inflammatory markers drop. This isn't alternative medicine—it's the cutting edge of medical science. You might not eliminate every medication, but as someone who's personally managed endometriosis through gut health optimization, I can testify that addressing the root cause can dramatically reduce symptoms and medication dependency. Ready to transform your health from the inside out? Start by nourishing the trillions of tiny allies in your gut microbiome.

Chapters

• 0:00 Understanding Gut Microbiome and Dysbiosis
• 2:38 Probiotics, Prebiotics, and Gut Diversity
• 4:39 Digestion and Key Metabolites Function
• 6:25 Inflammation and Chronic Disease Connection
• 10:20 Gut-Brain Connection and Systemic Effects
• 15:06 Final Thoughts and Personal Tips

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:26

so I'm recording on another platform. So, thinking about the gut biome and what intestinal dysbiosis is, um, think about you're taking out the weeds, you're gonna seed some things and you're gonna feed certain things. Now in the gut we have, the microbiome is comprised of a collection of bacteria. So all of these, when it's in a nice beautiful all of these, when it's in a nice beautiful homeostatic state, when it's in a nice beautiful area, you're going to have great bacteria, you're going to have archaea, you're going to have viruses, fungi, protists, and it's going to be so nicely wrapped into like a little bow, and your body will be like oh, I feel great. The problem is this ecosystem. When it becomes altered, you know then it, you know it's not great. So, like that, they call it eubiosis or I would call it utopia of a. You know, insides Everything is nicely diverse, everything is beautiful, and that's when you don't have as much illness. But when you have a dysbiosis or imbalance, there's a diversity problem and their community has been altered. So you just don't have the right amount of things. And we talked about what were the things that may have caused it. But things that are helpful for it or that are in the actual microbiome are probiotics, and probiotics are live microorganisms. Um, there's different ones Lactobacillus is pretty big Um, acidophilus you'll hear those, and there's so many um that are there. And then there's prebiotics, which are non-digestible foods that are used such to help, um, get through the body. Now, things such as such as typical fibrous foods. Now there's symbiotics, and symbiotics are both probiotics and prebiotics. Then there's postbiotics. Those are compounds in the microorganisms that are fermented metabolites, things of the health benefit, the host itself. Thanks for just joining in. I appreciate you.

Speaker 1: 2:29

Now, how do you get all the deficients Like? How do you get it to be mostly different species? Most of the time, what you put in your body should give you a microdiversity. The problem we have is a lot of the foods are not nutrient dense. So most of us, including myself, I have to have a green pack of something, of some sort of greens, in my diet, I have to put collagen, I put vitamins and I have to add it in. Now, unfortunately, most of the time, we don't have the amount of quality diversity and it needs to be added back into our diet, and that is why a lot of gut microbiome issues come up for people, because it is actually so much higher than it used to be. And most people are like, oh, that's why we have all these illnesses. We have these illnesses because there's just there's such a degrade over time. And granted, of course there's other illnesses, like acute illnesses that we will fix, like when I have to go and suture someone's finger. I have to suture someone's finger, that's an acute issue. They're having a heart attack. We have to treat that. They're having some sort of ailment. But when we're talking about these chronic issues, some of them can actually be addressed in a nutrient and a microbiome. So that's kind of that In digestion.

Speaker 1: 3:52

What do you do with digestion and how does that work? What does the body need to digest? A lot of nutrients like vitamin K, vitamin B, folate, b12, metabolism with the bile acids, metabolism in the liver, and we're just trying to, like you know, maintain that gut barrier, right? Um, and how does that work? Now, key metabolites when it comes to function in the body um, you'll hear about short chain fatty acids. I say that a couple times butyrate, acetate, propionate. When you'll hear someone say to you what's butyrate, acetate, propionate, when you'll hear someone say to you what's butyrate, that's like the energy source that causes. It's like anti-inflammatory, it will enhance the gut's biome and its microbiome. So when I ask people to do some greens or I'm pleased to meet you, usually that's because I'm trying to have them signal anti-inflammatory response in the body.

Speaker 1: 4:46

There's called propionate, which is probably absorbed and metabolized by the liver. That's why the liver has over 200 plus functions. Maybe I'd say 300 plus functions and I can't even name all of them. But it's so important and if we block the liver from doing the jobs that it's supposed to be doing glucose metabolism storage, there's an endless amount. And I will talk just one lecture on the liver alone, because it is such a profound organ that we just don't give it enough credit for uh and long term we just, you know, we just like kind of abuse it so it doesn't get the right amount of vitamins, um, and then this impairment overall, can you know, talk messes with your gut dysfunction and that malabsorption and maldigestion. Just over time it really can do a number on you. The leaky gut can be improved long term when you have the right amount of um. You know they call the butyrates or short chain fatty acids, and we get back the quality amounts of microbiome in there and we decrease the amount of inflammatory responses. So is it possible? Yes.

Speaker 1: 6:00

Now other things that cause dysbiosis, and I'll talk another huge lecture on hyperinsulemia. Hyperinsulemia I'm going to go over that tomorrow, that tomorrow, hyperinsulinia has to do with type 2 diabetes, insulin resistance, obesity, nafld, which is um, the non-steroidic fatty liver disease like I was saying about the liver being so important. Hydrogen how are you nice to meet you, um and how it can alter the body. So where you can get, if nothing else you get out of this is why are these? Why is the malabsorption and why is the gut so important? When you start decreasing the malabsorption and the body from doing what it needs to do and there is a dysregulation within the immune system and this chronic systemic inflammation is then triggered because it doesn't have the right amount of beautiful microbiome of things it's, you know. Those junctions are impaired, the immune system is triggered and this is when you have this exasperation of illnesses.

Speaker 1: 7:05

Now, everyone in some way has some sort of genetic markers. Now it's just a matter of what's going to be triggered. Is it rheumatoid arthritis? Is it lupus? Is it Hashimoto's, thyroiditis, some MS? Is it IBD? That does not mean that you don't need medications for these things. No, that's not what I'm saying. What it means is, if you have some sort of understanding of what's underlying you may be, you may be able to improve and manage this better. That's why I'm talking about chronic management illnesses, not trying to. You can. You can put a lot of these into remission or or decrease them significantly or need less medication. That's the, that's the, the goals.

Speaker 1: 7:44

When I try to see and work with individuals and have less brain fog, have more cognitive inability, and when you understand some of the reasons why things happen, especially with hyperinsulemia and the food intake, I think that becomes a big factor when you realize what you're putting into your body and exposing yourself to toxins, allergens like of that nature. It can also alter your hormones. Um, a big one when I was with my endometriosis. It's called estroblomi and it's a gut microbiome metabolizes estrogen. I had an excess of estrogen in my gut because I had a dysbiosis and I had an irregularity there and I didn't have it removed and due to that that caused an inflammatory trigger of my endometriosis right, so that in turn was triggered on someone. Also could be triggered on eczema. Maybe they ate or ingested or were exposed to something that caused them inflammation.

Speaker 1: 8:52

The skin will kind of show you things that you know psoriasis, eczema, rosacea, those are gut skin problems. Those are not just topical. You see someone with some, I can tell you. If I see your skin I can tell you you have X, y, z, not everything, but I can tell a lot of illnesses that people have by looking at their skin. Um, a lot of things here that um, lipomas, um skin tags, uh, fading, dark skin discoloration, genetic components, like that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. It just means that, like the skin can, like, usually that's a um long-term problem. Like right now, I mean this is silly. But this is sunburn. Right, I have sunburn because I was in the sun. That's topical, it's acute. If I didn't fix this long-term and I was out in the sun long, long time, I'd eventually get cancer.

Speaker 1: 9:57

So that if you're not going to fix the chronic problem at hand, then you will. It will progressively get worse Now if you don't fix the gut biome issues and keep bringing those triggers and they will connect and become a dysfunction and then it will. It will come out. But if you don't fix the gut biome issues and keep bringing those triggers and they will connect and become a dysfunction and then it will come out. But if you get to the root cause not necessarily the root cause but if you start to learn to manage some of these things, you're going to become freer. I'm telling you, I promise you, if you learn some of it, you will be able to fix just even a small portion of some of your illness. Like you could literally take one less pill, one less. If you notice, one thing triggers it, one thing doesn't.

Speaker 1: 10:32

For me, I don't drink anymore because I want my liver to be the best that it can be. The most I do is coffee yeah, I definitely do, that's probably my advice and I try to really try to sleep and have some more. My lifestyle management that's important for me and then I work on my cortisol levels, high and low, making sure that they're in balance and microbiome wise. I do take, like I said, I take my, my supplements, whether it's digestive enzymes, greens, and my nutritional needs so that I don't have malabsorption issues. On that note, I hope that was a fun topic. I know that it's a lot.

Speaker 1: 11:06

The gut and brain access can be significant and can be a lot, but I can go over a little bit more here. So let's think of it like your system has an inflammatory cascade. It's altered, the how do I put this? It's altered. Your system has an inflammatory cascade. It's altered a chronic inflammatory response, that response they call it as meta-inflammation. You know, the gut biome is altered. That has then altered your circulation within the body. That then has, you know, disrupted what nutrients you can get in, which then in turn has disrupted the immune system, which then can make it either go over an abundance autoimmune system or under. So if it's underactive, it's not help fighting off a certain disease for you. So if it's underactive, it's not help fighting off a certain disease for you. If it's overreactive, usually it's more like rashes and like a rheumatoid arthritis or like a pain, pain or it's going. It's underactive and it's not fighting off the things that you need to fight off Things that come up that people ask again, like the gut-brain connection, psychiatric disorders.

Speaker 1: 12:27

Now, some psychiatric disorders can cause brain fog, you know, depression, anxiety, and signal the biggest nerve from altering. Now that doesn't mean that some things are going to come up and you know they're minor and you can improve some psychiatric disorders with depression and anxiety. You can improve some of them without medications. But it also lets you know, though, too, why certain medications do work. So some antidepressants and anxiety medications improve your IBS or inflammatory responses, because there is a connection there, but that still doesn't fix necessarily underlying illnesses due to. Usually it's because there is a disconnect in the microbiome and there's the serotonin uptake. There's usually some sort of neurotransmitter that is not being produced or overproduced in the brain and in the gut, and because of that that's why those medications are additionally needed. But if you don't work on what you put into your body and work on your stressors, the medications are going to not always fix everything.

Speaker 1: 13:40

So that's where I come in to tell you that it you know it's not a one size fits all Other things that are. They come into play with the well, the gut biome affects all systems. I think that's. The other thing I need people to understand is that when your gut is is messed up, and your gut, brain, like all systems, can be affected and it's not just like a one thing, and I think the hardest part in the medical field that I have is that it is connected. Not everybody thinks of it like that, because we have separate, separate doctors for separate things. They're not always talking and they're like well, here's your medication for this, here's your medication for that. Okay, I'm going to take care of this part, and that's just frustrating. That's all. That's the only things that bother me, because you know they're linked.

Speaker 1: 14:27

It's inflammatory responses are linked, you know, with cardiovascular disease. It's not usually actually the dysphilippeia like the high cholesterol. It's usually influenced because the gut health is wrong. Your cholesterol has been altered, your stress levels are altered, your food intake is altered, things of that nature. Again, skin issues conditions are reflected with gut skin access. The barrier has been deteriorated, the inflammatory responses increase and then there's a balance, a disbalance there. So you know, therefore, like their connection here is all in turn long-term will cause chronic illness. So I hope that was interesting for you today. I am getting off now, but I'm really glad that you joined in. I appreciate you. Connect with me at any time. You guys are really sweet. I think it's really nice. So thank you again and I will be on tomorrow talking about hyperinsulinia and a couple other topics. Talk with you soon. Okay, god bless, I might actually not get off, but I'm just going to put on music. So that's what I'm going to do right now.