How to Heal Your Gut with Dr. Josh Axe

***Intro***

Dr. Cates: Hi there, I’m Dr. Trevor Cates. Welcome to the Spa Dr Podcast. Today, we’re talking about how to heal your gut. Even if you don’t have digestive issues or you think you don’t have digestive issues, gut related problems are related to so many of our health issues. I wanted to have a whole podcast dedicated to this and so I invited my guest Dr. Josh Axe on to talk about this.

Dr. Axe is a nutritionist, chiropractic doctor, and author with a passion to help people get well using food as medicine. He runs one of the largest natural health websites, draxe.com. He’s been featured on many television shows including the Dr. Oz shows, CBS, and NBC.

He’s also author of the new book Eat Dirt. This might be a surprising title for you, but don’t worry he explains exactly why he chose this title, what led him to write this book and why it’s so important. We also talk about leaky gut and the causes, how to heal it, and Dr. Axe’s five gut types.

Again, if you don’t think you have gut issues, I think you want to listen to this, watch this, because there’s a lot of great information here to help you figure out if gut issues are a problem for you, if it can be related to your health issues such as autoimmune diseases, hormone imbalances, skin issues, lot of problems are related to the gut. I hope you enjoy this interview with Dr. Axe.

***Interview***

Dr. Axe, it’s great to have you on my show.

Dr. Axe: Hey, thanks for having me, Trevor. Great to be here.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. I want to first start off with your background of what got you into natural medicine.

Dr. Axe: For me, I think a lot of people it’s a natural health crisis that gets them involved, or something that just moves them deeply that just income. It was the same for me. Growing up, my family was always into fitness but not necessarily into health. That’s one of the things that I can tell you, there’s a huge difference between fitness and looking good and actually being healthy on the inside.

My mom was really the role model of fitness. She was a swim instructor, she was a gym teacher, very fit and active. At 40 years old, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. My family lived in this medical system at the time to where anytime anyone in our family was sick, we automatically take medications. I would get sick every winter, got put on antibiotics all of the time.

When my mom was diagnosed, she went through the series of medical systems. She had a mastectomy, she went through rounds and rounds of chemo therapy, and I can still remember this day watching her hair fall out, looking at her, just seeing her age right before my eyes over the matter of weeks after going through chemo and just saying to myself as a kid I never want to see anyone have to go through that again.

Praise God, she was brought through that and diagnosed as cancer free and healthy but really she continued downward spiral after that to where she was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, chronic fatigue syndrome, clinical depression, she got put on three different medications and then developed chronic constipation digestive issues to where she was having about one to two bowel movements a week for years and years and years.

Seeing my mom go through all that really drove me to become a doctor of natural medicine, really focus on helping people heal with food. My path continued on to where I got really interested in nutrition and fat.

At 14 years old, the year after my mom was diagnosed with cancer, I ran into a couple who were really into nutrition and fitness and I knew nothing about nutrition but I started realizing that soda was bad so I gave up soda. I said I’m not going to have soda anymore and just really started getting very in-depth in nutrition. Went to University of Kentucky, started studying nutrition there, became a personal trainer and a nutrition consult, and then I went on to chiropractic college where I really started learning more about healing the body naturally and then went to get my after graduation CNS nutrition degree and doctor of natural medicine.

Along that way, my mom was diagnosed with cancer when I was about to graduate from school. My mom called me on the phone and said I’ve got bad news, the oncologist says my cancer is back, this time it’s on my lungs. They want to go and do a surgery and radiation but I said mom, I’ll be home. I flew [00:03:08] to take care of her all naturally.

I had the amazing opportunity at the time to be working with some of the best holistic physicians in the entire world and asking for their advice. We decided to take care of my mom all naturally and we went from her diet that was very core at the time and started having her juice certain types of vegetables everyday. We did something called the Budwig Protocol where she did loads of probiotics with healthy fats. She started drinking [00:03:38], that was a lot of steamed cooked vegetables. That was really it, there was a lot of those very healthy superfoods. Doing certain supplements like [00:03:48] probiotics and doing certain essential oils and medicinal mushrooms and things like that.

We followed this natural protocol for four months and went and redid a CT scan after four months. The oncologist called us after a couple of days and said this is very unusual, the tumors have shrunk in half. He said I don’t know exactly what you’re doing, but go ahead and come back in nine months. We went back nine months later, at that point almost complete remission. Today, she’s in complete remission. My mom actually is in her mid 60s, she water skis, her and my dad are retired from Ohio, they went to Florida here a year and a half ago.

ANyways, she runs with me when I come down. Just has amazing health. [00:04:31] one of the things that really, that experience with my mom led me to practice the way I practice. I started worrying about various functional medicine clinics in the entire country and not just Tennessee, and where I took care of patients for years. Now, take the same principles and curated programs online and do a health newsletter, many of other things. The thing I told my patients for years is I’m going to take care of you like my own mom and family.

One of the things I found with my mom when she was sick, she was so overwhelmed. I found that with a lot of patients coming in, whether it’s inflammatory bowel disease, autoimmune disease, cancer, whatever it is. They come in a lot of times, my mom was a deer in a headlight. She was paralyzed because there was so much conflicting information, so many mixed messages out there that when my mom got sick I did something with her, we called it a fiction makeover. Went through her kitchen, we threw out all of the stuff out of her refrigerator and pantry she shouldn’t have, we went on a shopping tour at the health food store, regular store. I made her her own little cookbooks that she used every single day, I put her shopping list.

I just continued to educate her everyday and so I really did the same thing in practice and the same thing with my patients. I’m really letting them know what they need to do for every step of the way in order to heal and get healthy. That’s really a big part of what led me into sort of holistic nutrition.

Dr. Cates: That’s fantastic. It’s always a lot of us have these stories of what leads us into a natural medicine like you said. That is very inspirational story, so thanks for sharing that with us.

You mentioned that it’s overwhelming for people. I hear that often. I understand that, I can see how people get overwhelmed with all the information online and then they get different information from their conventional doctors. What do you recommend for people that are overwhelmed?

Dr. Axe: I think it starts with having one step at a time and first off, not figuring out every last thing you need to do but instead figuring out what the most important things are and really just creating a plate of action. I think getting things in your schedule. With my mom, we didn’t start figuring out things. What are we going to do six months down the road?

We figured okay, let’s start with diet. What are we going to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? What are some of the healthiest things you can put in your body? We didn’t try and take all these things away, we just said here’s the ideal things we should eat. For breakfast, we had her do the certain healing smoothie. For lunch and dinner, we had her do these dishes that were very high in vegetables and some healthy fats and things like that. We really started off with her diet.

Step two, we really looked at her lifestyle and we said okay, we know stress is an issue, let’s figure out some ways to reduce stress. Let’s take the healing bath at night, let’s go on a walk, let’s figure out how to crowd out some of the stress. We did that another day, and then another day we said okay let’s figure out the breath supplements. We’re not going to take every supplement in the world, but let’s take about five or six things that you’re going to take on a regular basis. She did that. That was it. We didn’t worry.

We decided hey, we’re going to stick with this plan. We’re not going to sort of get focused on the latest fads or trends or this and that, we’re only going to focus on food first, lifestyle, as well as doing a little bit of supplementation, that was really it. I think that it’s important as well that people have the tools and resources they need, but I would say just a daily eating plan and meal plan was really the first place we started.

The other thing, if somebody is just in general trying to get healthy, one of the things I recommend where they start is to just change breakfast. If somebody is looking to get healthy, if you change your breakfast, you’re changing 33% of your diet. Really, that’s a big change and transformation for people. Crowd out the bagels, the cereals, or whatever it is and start doing healing smoothie for breakfast or something along those lines. I think that’s a good place to start.

Dr. Cates: I completely agree with that. Thank you for pointing that out. Breakfast is such an important part of the day, it’s how you start your day. If you start with a healthy smoothie or something, a healthy breakfast, then you’re going to have more energy throughout the day and you’re going to be more likely to make other healthy choices with meals. I think that’s a great idea.

Josh, I know that you’ve got so much great information on your website. I just really applaud you for everything that you’re putting up there, so much great information for free online. The lot of great recipes and resources for people. Thank you for doing everything you do to share information. I’ll tell people go check out Dr. Axe’s site, find this one little thing or just get some information. Thank you on that.

I want to mention your book because I keep thinking about the title of your book. You have this new book that’s coming out and it’s called Eat Dirt, right?

Dr. Axe: Yeah. I love the title of the book. One of the things that I’m really proud of with the book is that it’s not a lot of the same information. A lot of times, I know that I get books in the mail, it’s crazy. Somebody sent me a box of 200 books in the mail that I’ve never met before the other day. I just needed one. I get books every single week and it’s like I get the same thing. Eat more healthy fats, go a little carb, and this and that, that sort of it.

With my book, we really tried to really bring out the forefront, new information as it pertains to treating the root cause of disease, healing the microbus, and really again none of it was for [00:10:18] factors, it’s really just to say here’s what the most recent science is saying is that what we actually need to get more dirt in our diet and in a way naturally boost our immune systems through doing that.

One of the reasons we got the title was my mom was a germ phobe. Growing up, my grandmother’s the same way. If you ever seen the movie What About Bob where it’s going around with the handkerchief, as a kid that was my grandma. We would literally bathe in chemicals after we touched something. When we would buy food like potatoes, my grandma would actually make us scrub potatoes to where there was no skin on them at all.

My mom one time was in the kitchen and she’s gone to the farmer’s market scrubbing her vegetables. I’m like mom, just stop it. Eat some dirt, it’s fine. ALso, there’s also great studies showing that actually the dirt and in fact embedded on things like carrots. When you look at carrots, they’re sort of comparing too.

We’ve got the carrots you buy at the farmer’s market and then those peeled baby carrots that are sprayed with chemical solution which actually will kill off some of the good microbes and beneficial probiotics in your gut, versus that carrots. Even if you wash them off, beans are another example, they still have these brown spots on them. Those are known as SPO soil based organisms, soil based probiotics, and there’s proof showing that they actually help your body in breaking down polysaccharide starches and actually help you in digesting your food.

Really, there are food based probiotics such as [00:12:00] bacterium and lactobacillus but they’re also soil based organism or probiotics such as bacillus [00:12:06], acidobaco and many other types of microorganisms that we actually also have to have in our diet. In the book, I even talk about some really cool tribes of people that have great health and how they actually get a little bit of dirt in their diet everyday.

In the book, I’m not recommending you go in your backyard and you start scooping up and eating dirt, but I go through actually some sweet ways to essentially eat dirt such as eating raw local honey, or walking barefoot, or having a pet. These are all sort of examples of eating dirt and getting what I call micro exposures or in ways sort of—I’ll call them natural immunizations.

I’ll give you another example of this. My in-laws just went to Mexico for their 30th wedding anniversary, they went to Cancun and they did not drink any of the water there. Reason being is they would’ve gotten skin. Same thing if I go there, I would’ve gotten sick because I don’t have any type of immunity to some of the microbes in their water. The people in Cancun, the locals, they’re drinking the water and they’re not getting sick, they’re not having issues. Why is that? It’s natural immunization.

When we hear immunization, people think of shots and vaccines and things like that. That’s sort of the synthetic way that we’ve come up with. There’s ways in nature that we can naturally support and build our immune system and really most important thing as well as doing certain things locally for instance with raw honey, it is one of the most powerful natural ways to strengthen your local immunity per se.

Actually, raw honey contains over 200 microbes including lots of different types of pollen. There are studies, many studies, showing that honey’s helped with allergies, seasonal allergies and asthma and other conditions. Most people wait until they’re sick and then they’ll do some honey. Really, i needs to be raw, it needs to be local. You could be doing it on a regular basis. What happens is you’re getting micro exposure to pollen and microbes from your local environment. In the spring or fall when this [00:14:13] of pollen comes at you, you’ve had these micro immunizations or natural exposures overtime then you’re not affected and having these major allergies year round like a lot of people do.

The book really is all about strengthening your gut and micro bio, boosting up these micro organisms that then help your body naturally heal, overcome disease, and that type of thing. That’s a big part of what Eat Dirt is about.

Dr. Cates: When I heard about your book, I loved it automatically because I’ve always felt that way. I grew up on a farm and we always ate a lot of dirt. My parents just say oh don’t worry, that’s clean enough. We had lots of farm animals and things that was just part of growing up. I love that approach and I feel like we become such germaphobes. I see it so much in my kids’ schools and with other parents.

People are so afraid so they ended up taking antibiotics and they’re using hand sanitizers and clorox, bleach on everything. It just makes me nervous because we’re killing off so much of—we’re just creating an imbalance. We have these bacteria in our bodies that are supposed to be there, and we don’t want the harmful ones but we want to balance.

That’s what gets us back to the gut health, the leaky gut issues, and so many of our health problems today. I know that you’re a big believer of this, that the gut health is key for our overall health. We talk a lot about this with skin health, I talk a lot about skin and the importance of gut microbiome, skin microbiome. I want to hear more about what your belief system is on the gut microbiome, what your research has led you to.

Dr. Axe: Sure. I want to actually go over a few things you said here and then jump into that. You hit the nail right on the head. I say all the things you mentioned in my book, I reference the gut [00:16:22] and I’ll go through a few here, I have more in the book. Gut grenades are such these things like we’re dropping bombs in the gut, we’re killing off all these good microorganisms that are so important for our health. The problem is we’ve just swung this pentium too far in the other direction. It’s not that we don’t want to be sanitary, because that’s one of the things I’ve gotten fantastic feedback on the book. People would read the book, they’ll see that I talk about this.

Eating dirt, that sound, they’re doing antibiotics. They’re like antibiotics have saved a lot of lives, they have in the past especially but it was more of this proper sanitation. Again, we’ve really gone too far. We’ve gone to an extreme here which is really the crooks of the issue.

I have something in the book we call the 6 Gut Grenades and the A-Bomb. The A-bomb [00:17:12] prescription antibiotics because it is the most devastating and damaging thing that can happen to microbiome when somebody is taking rounds of these prescription antibiotics.

There are studies showing in the Journal Of American Medical Association that it increases the risk of cancer if you take prescription antibiotics because not only does it kill the bad bacteria, it kills the good bacteria in your gut, a major part of your immune system. As you head on, hand sanitizers, fluoride and chlorine in our drinking water actually kill off good microorganisms. Other cleaning products, personal care products, talked about skin health. Most of them are antibacterial, things like try cocyn added in.

You’re right in saying that all of these things that are anti microbiome in nature have damaged our microbiome and have led to this condition called leaky gut. Essentially what leaky gut is, it’s where you should have microscopic holes in your digestive lining that are very small. What should happen is when your body consumes the food, let’s use a grain for an example. It’s usually on a strong bolstered up microbium, the food comes in, the bacteria and the enzymes will break down the food in the very small particles and then those things will be allowed to pass through your bloodstream as nutrients and your body can utilize all those things.

What happens in leaky gut, sort of imagine your intestines as a net with very small holes is if you don’t have enough good bacteria or certain amino acids like glutamine or a number of things in your body, these type junctions they’re called—or let’s use an analogy where you got a hole in your neck. You got to ripping and tearing it. Now what happens is things that should’ve been fully broken down like gluten are now not. Those pass into the bloodstream and will circulate causing systemwide inflammation of the body where they can target more susceptible areas such as your brain, your thyroid, your skin, your joints. It can affect really any and every area of your body.

A lot of times when people hear the term leaky gut, they tend to think that sounds like a severe digestive issue, maybe like a loose stool or inflammatory bowel disease. Someone can have leaky gut syndrome and not have a single digestive issue. They could just a skin issue like eczema or psoriasis. They could just be having a joint pain like arthritis autoimmune disease.

A few of the other main symptoms of leaky gut can be adrenal fatigue, food sensitivities, and food allergies, major warning signs. Type 1 diabetes is another, depression, anxiety, autism, ADHD. All of these are big warning signs that somebody has leaky gut.

Hippocrates, I know everyone’s heard this over 2000 years ago that all diseases begins in the gut. I really and profound in clinical practice that it’s absolutely true. If we’re really going to heal the body, we’ve got to heal the gut first. I see a lot of clinicians both in the conventional and the natural realm who if somebody comes in with a disease like Hashimoto’s or thyroiditis, the first thing they’ll do is work to treat the thyroid either with a medication or supplement.

In my practice, that’s really not how I practice. I really say why does somebody have Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, I know that it really starts with the gut so we got to heal and seal the gut. We’ve got to build up those good microbes, and then the body will not be able to attack itself and reduce inflammation to the point where you’re not having a thyroid problem.

If all disease begins in the gut, all health begins in the gut as well. We’ve really got to treat and help heal the gut along with the thyroid. You can really do both together, there’s a way to do that and that’s the way that I practice. Again, I really think an important distinction to consider is that in order to heal the thyroid, in order to heal the joints, in order to heal the brain and even the skin, it really starts with the microbiome and it starts with the gut.

Dr. Cates: I talk about this a lot too, I call it skinflammation where inflammation inside shows up on our skin. I know a lot of the different things you talked about, eczema, psoriasis, acne, all this different even premature aging is related to that internal inflammation that shows up on the skin. All the other things, immune system. Our immune system can’t work right. A lot of things you talked about, some of the things you mentioned are autoimmune diseases, so those are certainly a big issue for people with leaky gut, right?

Dr. Axe: Yeah, absolutely. I’m just saying too, it can show up in so many different places. The skin is a big one. You mentioned premature aging. If somebody’s getting age spots or premature wrinkles, that starts in the inside, it starts with the microbiome.

Dr. Cates: Absolutely. Let’s talk about what we do to heal the gut.

Dr. Axe: Sure. There are many different causes of leaky gut. It really does start with diet, that’s a primary concern. The next thing would be really looking at microbial exposures, also reducing toxic lifestyle, but let’s start with diet first. When it comes to diet, there are certain foods that are going to be very, very problematic. One of those is going to be sugar. Sugar, one of the problems with sugar is that different microorganisms feed off of different things, or prefer different forms of fuel. Actually, it’s a little bit of a misnomer when people say good and bad bacteria.

The journey of bacteria or microbes in our body, by the way we shouldn’t just have bacteria, we should have beneficial yeast in our body, we should have beneficial fungi, beneficial parasites, beneficial viruses. In fact in the future it’s funny because right now people think well there’s good and bad bacteria but all parasites are bad and all funguses are bad and all viruses are bad. No actually, there are good viruses. In fact, ocean is the largest body of good viruses in the world. They’re called bacteria phages and they’re used actually in rationale, actually used in natural medicine, certain supplement companies are going to be coming out with good viruses in the future. Anyways, just sort of a side note there with some of the really unique and awesome things we’re gonna be seeing here in the future in terms of some different forms of natural treatment.

Dr. Cates: That’s why we call it the microbiome, not the bacterial biome. It’s a whole bunch of different microorganisms, it’s not just bacteria. Thank you for pointing that out, yes.

Dr. Axe: Yeah, thanks. A lot of them are called commensal bacteria are commensal organisms to where they’re good, but they’re not necessarily bad or good. They should be there in a certain amount. When they become imbalanced that there’s problems. E-coli is a great example. You need e-coli in your body. When you get too much, that becomes bad.

It’s a similar thing with candidiasis and candida, a small amount in your body you should have. When it gets to be too much, that becomes a big problem. When you get too much of it as well, for instance when you’re consuming too much sugar and you’re feeding yeast within your sugar, that yeast actually will start to produce toxins when they proliferate too much. That will actually eat away a hole in the gut lining causing leaky gut. Sugar is probably the biggest concern, especially processed sugars.

The next would be conventional grains today. I don’t think all grains are villainous and evil like some people think. In fact, if you look at something like the paleo diet,they recommend nuts and seeds which in fact are actually higher in [00:24:47] acid than most grains. The problem is we don’t prepare things properly. 99% of brains are not sprouted and then fermented.

If you are fermenting like a true sourdough process, cooking like in Chinese medicine, grains aren’t necessarily all bad but 99% of grains we’re consuming today are very hard to digest. They’re not broken down properly, many of them are not farmed properly or they’re hybridized so they become very hard to digest. One of the worst things you can eat with leaky gut is going to be conventional grains.

The next thing is going to be hydrogenated oils. One thing, I see a lot of people go to the health food store and buy healthy chips and things like that. The problem is most of them have oils in them that are very high in omega 6 fats. Many of those oils quite also be partially hydrogenated. A lot of these today I see using mixture of sunflower oil and canola oil and both those oils, they’re high in omega 6 fatty acids like sunflower is. That’s a very unstable oil.

If you’re eating chips that are fried, I know sunflower sounds healthier but overall a lot of people are eating these hydrogenated vegetable or seed oils that probably really aren’t all that healthy that I think are very inflammatory to the gut lining as well. Generically modified food aren’t the best, artificial sweeteners are very hard on the gut. All of those are the worst foods.

The best foods, my number one food is bone broth. Bone broth is very high in amino acids that help heal the gut lining such as proline and glycine. Proline is a main [00:26:33] of collagen or gelatin and it really helps in repairing the gut lining. Glutamine also helps in repairing the gut lining but is also beneficial for—it’s used for fuel for many of the cells in your small intestine.

Bone broth I believe is by far the most healing food. I call it the missing protein because a lot of us are getting amino acids from meat, some from grains, but amino acids profile in bone broth is very unique. In fact, the amino acids profile in both bone broth and organ meats, they’re both very unique and the ones I think we’re missing the most.

I recommend number one for my patients to make bone broth or buy real bone broth in liquid form. Also, there’s a really amazing product coming up now called bone broth protein where you can actually get bone broth in a powder form. It’s just incredible. I recommend my patients now, I’ll start to recommend them to do bone broth powder, actually putting that in smoothies.

Sort of the next best thing after bone broth protein would be something called collagen powder. That also does have many of those amino acids there as well which is great.

The other great thing about bone broth and bone broth protein is that not only do they have these amino acids, they’re also high in other factors such as glucosamine, and [00:27:49] which are good for gut repair, glucosamine or glycans which are good for gut repair. They’re also high in minerals like potassium and magnesium which are great for the gut and just some other cool fido nutrients there too. That’s my favorite food.

My next one would be fermented vegetables like sauerkraut and kimchi. They contain a microbe called lactobacillus planetarium which has been shown to be very, very good for building up bacteria in the gut.

My third would be fermented goat’s milk dairy such as a goat’s milk kefir. The problem is most milk today is not digested well. Most of it comes from cows, most of it is not raw. But if you really want to boost up the number of probiotics, the food that is the most diverse and has the highest levels of probiotics would be a goat’s milk kefir. If you want to go to your local farmer’s market and buy raw goat’s milk kefir, that can be a very beneficial thing for some people.

And then I would say steamed vegetables in the diet along with foods rich in omega 3 fatty acids such as wild caught salmon. That would be great as well.

Here’s what the diet should look like. It should include vegetables, cooked vegetables, organic meat, and bone broth. That is the perfect meal. Busting out the crock pot and doing that super fruit smoothie in the morning with maybe some blueberries, coconut milk, and some bone broth protein powder, collagen protein for breakfast. That’s an ideal breakfast, and then crockpot for lunch and dinner. That’s pretty much the diet I put my patients on.

I do have something called the gut types and I believe that there are very—everybody is unique and different so the diet isn’t the same for everybody. I think in general, those are some of the most healing foods for leaky gut.

Dr. Cates: Those are great. I agree with that. I want to call out something that you’re talking about as eating cooked vegetables. Can you talk about why cooked and not raw?

Dr. Axe: Sure. Again, I study a lot of Chinese medicine, it’s been around 4,000 years. When you look at the way that raw foods are nature, they haven’t been predigested. One of the things that we’ve really gotten away from is fasting. Fasting has been used for thousands of years, it’s recommended from the bible for both physical and religious growth. It’s recommended in Chinese medicine, doing different forms of fasting, Hippocrates recommended it.

The reason fasting is graced is because it rests your body. This is an important distinction. In fact, of all the things that I say, this is one of the most important things to remember. There’s not a food or a supplement that can heal your body. There’s not a food or supplement that heals you. Your body heals itself.

Here’s what I mean. If you get a cut on your hand here, you don’t have to feed it anything. You just need to keep it from getting infected, keep it covered up, and your body heals itself.

Imagine your gut lining, it’s the same thing. You have [00:30:43] that are damaged and inflamed. Well, your body is going to heal itself when you stop irritating it. A lot of the foods we eat, even though they’d be considered healthy because they’re higher in nutrients, they’re difficult or harder for your body to suggest so your body has to do a lot of work. You may not fast on some of these diets, but what you want to do is you want to make it as easy on your body as possible so it can heal.

If you continue to eat foods that are hard to digest such as raw nuts and seeds, a raw diet would be the worst thing you can do for leaky gut. Raw nuts and seeds, raw vegetables, very, very hard in the digestive tract versus things that are pre-digestive. This is the reason why sprouting grains or slow cooking them in a crockpot or fermenting them is better because they get broken down for you. Now, your body has to do little to no work.

This is also why bone broth is even better than meat when it comes to a protein source because they’re already in the amino acid form, not the protein. Your body literally is just like hey amino acids, come right on in, come right in the bloodstream, I’m using you now. It has to do almost no work. Again, protein bone broth is great for vegetables. For carbohydrates in general, you want things that are cooked because they are much easier for your body to break down. The same goes for certain types of fats as well that are easier to digest. That’s a big part of my diet as well, it’s consuming things that are very, very easy to digest.

Dr. Cates: I know that you’re specifically talking about that have leaky gut, that already have issues with their digestive systems. You’re trying to give it a break and make it easy for your body to heal itself. Not having to do extra work, by trying to digest when it’s already struggling, not eating things that are going to further inflame your body, you’re giving it a break and just giving it things that will help support and nourish.

If someone had a very healthy digestive system which I don’t know how many people these days have a super healthy digestive system but for those that do, they can maybe eat some salads and some raw foods, right?

Dr. Axe: Yeah, absolutely. It really depends on the person. This really comes into what I teach in my book on the gut types. Everybody is one of five gut types. This is where I have one gut type in the book called a toxic gut and this is for somebody if somebody has cancer per se or liver toxicity or had their gallbladder removed. They do better on a raw food diet, they do better on a diet rich in vegetable juices and salads.

When your body is both sort of coming into spring or out of spring, that’s the best time to do, and even in the summer. When your body’s already sort of warm and hot, your body is actually better able to break down those foods versus the winter time, it’s actually harder to digest raw foods and vegetables. In Chinese medicine, they look at is your body too damp or too dry, is it too hot or too cold, is there too much wind or too much stagnation within the body. It’s really all about balancing those things out.

With a toxic gut type that I talked about in the book with the certain conditions, they need more raw foods, more foods that are green, more foods that are sour, because it really supports and nourishes the liver and gall bladder versus somebody which I call a candida gut.

Candida people are very damp and very cold. Always very, very damp. One of the issues today is I see people doing candida diets but they’re eating a lot of raw foods. It’s about the worst thing you could do for candida. We want to be warming the body and drying the body out. I talked about this and I have a diet for each gut type in the book. If somebody has candida and they’re too damp, the worst foods are eggs are very dampening. Dairy is very dampening, breads are very dampening, bananas are really dampening, so are avocados.

All of those things are very dampening to the body versus foods that are drying are green leafy vegetables that are herbs. Actually, even things like squashes are good. Certain types of rices. All those things—corn is actually another great one that helps your body eliminate dampness. There’s an herb called pau d’arco which is amazing for eliminating dampness from the body. Drinking up pau d’arco if you have candida.

Again, as you’re saying, I think everybody’s different. That’s the other thing too is that there isn’t actually one leaky gut type for everyone, there are some commonalities but I think that everybody’s unique and different.

Dr. Cates: Yeah, absolutely. You touched on two of those types. What are the other three? You don’t have to go in deep detail because we can get your book if we want more detail on it, but just kind of touch on those. It would be great.

Dr. Axe: Sure. One of the first places I would suggest you will start, there’s actually a quiz in the book called the five gut type quiz where you can discover your gut type. Also if you want to know if you have leaky gut, I have a quiz online. You can go to isyourgutleaking.com and take a quiz to see if you have leaky gut.

I mentioned toxic gut, I mentioned candida, the third one is called immune gut. With immune gut, this is where if anybody has autoimmune disease, food sensitivities, inflammatory bowel disease, or immune related issues, this is the gut type plan you want to follow. In Chinese medicine, it’s really connected to the colon and lungs. Those are really the chief areas of your immunity.

What you want to do with that diet is you want to consume more white foods, foods that are white. Cauliflower is fantastic, garlic and onions, these foods are very nourishing to your immune system. Also, some things you want to be doing with the immune gut type is you want to be doing a lot of broth and meals in the crockpot because you want to be warming the body. It’s very important.

Also looking at your emotions, I get into a lot with lifestyle and emotions in the book. People with the immune gut type, their biggest emotion is grief or sadness or depression. If somebody is depressed, this is what they want to follow as well. If somebody has been through a hard relationship like a divorce or been through severe loss like the loss of a loved one or anything like that, you’ll experience grief and different emotions affect different organs.

Grief and sadness and depression affect the lungs and the colon. Impatience, frustration, and anger affect the liver. Worry affects the stomach. Fear affects the kidneys and the bladder and the male and female organs. Imagine if somebody is frightened or scared, they talk about being scared to death and very frightened, people will urinate themselves because that emotion affects that specific organ. In the book, I really go through these things emotionally as well.

The other gut type is called gastric gut. This is for people with issues such as sea bow which is small intestine bacteria overgrowth, acid reflux, gas imploding, constipation diarrhea, but a lot of these digestive issues many of it start in the stomach there’s a gastric at play. That’s really about actually eating smaller meals, overeating is the worst thing you can do, under chewing is really hard on the stomach as well.

Another gut type I have, the last one but it’s very prevalent, is stressed gut. That’s for people that are struggling with thyroid issues, adrenal issues, anxiety, even weight gain is another big one. Typically, people that tend to hold onto body weight either in the stress gut or the candida gut category. One other thing is people take the quiz in the book, they’ll come out in the primary and the secondary gut types. Most people are multiple gut types but they have a stronger tendency to be one or the other. The stressed gut, again, thyroid adrenal conditions. That, you actually want to be focusing on dark colored foods, foods that are very high in fido nutrients, antioxidants, and electrolytes such as blueberries, seaweed is great as well. There’s a lot of other foods, but that’s just in general how the gut type diet works.

Dr. Cates: That’s great. That’s a really interesting take on it to break it down into those categories. It’s great that you’ve done a lot of research on figuring out what are the best foods for those types of people. It sounds like you’ve done a lot of research on that looking at Chinese medicine and also probably more conventional research too and different things.

How long did it take you to write this book and get all this information together? It seems like a lot.

Dr. Axe: It took a while. Really dating back to starting in practice and really noticing and be [00:39:18], I developed leaky gut when I was living in a home in Florida. I was living in a home that had black mould throughout the whole thing, I didn’t realize it. I started developing these health issues. I just couldn’t figure it out. I started following a diet that was healthier and it got 70% better but it just would not completely go away. I kind of put myself in that toxic gut category where I was and started having issues and started my own healing my body completely. And then working with patients, I would notice this patient is responding great to this, another one not as well.

Really, ten plus years in terms of clinical practice and seeing the way certain patients were healing, what was working with different ones. I would say overall putting the book together was about three years since I’ve been studying Chinese medicine. I really brought together Chinese medicine, my own clinical practice, and a lot of research today on the gut health and the microbiome and sort of married them together really creating this sort of gut type program. It took some time, but I’m excited to have the book finally here.

Dr. Cates: Great, I’m excited for you too. Josh, thanks so much for your interview today, thanks for the information and we’ll have all the links up for your book so that people can go and get it, check it out, as well as your online quiz. Thank you so much.

Dr. Axe: Thanks, Trevor, thanks for having me.

Dr. Cates: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dr. Josh Axe. To learn more about Dr. Axe, you can visit my website thespadr.com. Go to the podcast page with his interview and you’ll find all of the information and links to his new book, his quiz, and all that information in there.

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