Speaker 1: 1:25

Okay, everybody, welcome to today's show. I'm Dr J Tita, I am your host of the Next Level Human podcast and I have my guest today, josh Deck. He is a clinical nutritionist and we are going to be talking about a topic that he and I were just chatting briefly before we hit the record button. That, I think, is going to be very, very useful for all of you, because the gut is the seat of much of our dysfunction. Some would argue it is the seat of all of our dysfunction. When we talk about health, it gets involved, whether it is the causative factor or significantly contributing to people's issues. The gut is one of the center points of our physiology and Josh Deck is a expert on this. And, josh, I'm just going to open us up real quick with the story, because your expertise is Crohn's and colitis and I just want to let everyone know these are considered traditional medicine. For those of you who don't know, ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease are considered incurable diseases. They are one of the most difficult things that doctors deal with and, funnily enough for those of us in the functional medicine world we operate in a completely different way that these things are not seen as incurable to us at all. In fact, we see them as something that has a high potential of being addressed and perhaps using the bad word in traditional medicine even cured.

Speaker 1: 2:58

And I want to tell you actually I was telling Josh when we were talking briefly about actually my first successful case that really blew me away when I was in clinics, going all the way back to 2004. I had a woman in her early 30s come in and she had Crohn's disease, and one of the reasons that she was coming to me is because Crohn's is difficult in and of itself and she had already had one bowel resection. But one of the things that was really bothering her is she had an anal vaginal fistula, which can sometimes happen in Crohn's, and colitis, which is basically an opening from the anal cavity into the vagina. As you can imagine, this is an incredibly difficult thing and the doctors were not able to do much about it. She certainly was not someone who was into alternative medicine not someone who was into alternative medicine, to say the least and so I was kind of her last resort and we worked together for about 18 months.

Speaker 1: 3:56

And what I was amazed about because at the time, dealing with some of this incredible stuff, it's sort of like. Is this going to be able to close on its own? What are we going to be able to do? And through dietary change, through some of this stuff I'm sure Josh is going to cover through using Manuka honey packs into the vagina and other things, we were able to close this down. We were able to heal this Crohn's and quote get her to cure and at follow-up, five years post when I lost touch with her, she was essentially completely Crohn's free, and so this is a long time ago, over 20 years ago, this particular case, and it's probably 10 years now that I've done. I haven't been heavily in the clinic, but I am excited to hear from you, josh, your approach, what is new in this field. I'm excited to sit back and learn, and I know my listeners are going to. So welcome to the podcast. And why don't you just kind of tell us a little bit about your story and what got you started in this direction?

Speaker 2: 5:03

Sure, jade, I'd love to. And first of all, thanks for having me. You know, when it comes down to the functional medicine space, I think most of us kind of have our villain origin story. We all started somewhere and my whole history was just happy accidents. I used to be a paramedic. That's always what I wanted to do. I loved medicine and emergency medicine and I always remember, even as a little kid, watching ambulances drive by. I thought it'd be the coolest job and I loved it. But I realized very, very quickly it was just sick care, as I'm sure most of your listeners already know, and we'd pick people up for the same things over and over, take them to the hospital, they get more of the same drugs sent back home, and the cycle would repeat until they just died of the same condition that they were trying to manage. The entire time. Nobody treated it, and so I left paramedics my early 20s I was probably 21, 22, and I picked up a job as a personal trainer and this was my first, without realizing it, my first window into functional medicine.

Speaker 2: 5:58

A woman who came to see me named Lynn, one of our first clients. We ended up doing a little mini documentary. She was so successful and she was 57 years old. She was on 17 pills and insulin for breakfast. She had nine pills and insulin for bedtime Pretty standard American, over 50, 60 years old. She had hypertension, she had a CPAP machine. She was on disability at work, just layer after layer after layer of issues by age 59, nothing but nutrition and exercise and basic lifestyle. She was off all but two medications, no longer on disability. Her eyesight even improved, she had to get her glasses reverted down a prescription after her diabetes alleviated.

Speaker 2: 6:28

And now, 59 years old, I entered, entered her, into the Raw Power Lifting Federation here in Canada and she broke a world record and kept breaking them Jade until like 63 when she retired. And so that was my first window really into what the human body is capable of. And I remember shortly after that mid-20s I was at a trade show and I saw this woman on stage talking about the gut and the microbiome and the birth, the development and every fact that she would drop every, every sentence that came out of her mouth. I hung on to like my jaw, was on the floor for a 30 minute presentation and it was like love at first sight. That is what I'm doing for the rest of my life.

Speaker 2: 7:02

I saved up, went back to school. Here I am mid twenties and I decided to become a nutritionist. And one thing led to another, and now I specialize in gut and I've had the pleasure of working with some of the best in the world on my show and collaboratively, and it's just been remarkable how, dare I say, easy it can be to reverse severe diseases, particularly things like Crohn's and colitis, if you just have the right approach. And so we're really enjoying it. We just love giving people their quality of life back.

Speaker 1: 7:29

Yeah Well, and so we're really enjoying it. We just love giving people their quality of life back. Yeah Well, thank you for that story and thank you for your work, josh. One of the things we talk about here at Next Level Human is. I always love to hear the story of people's purpose, potential and what gets them there. I have, obviously, this theory. That's the whole point of this show is that each of us has a unique gift to give, unique work to do. You are unique. There's never been another Josh Deck on the planet in all of humanity, nor will there ever be again. Same goes for Jade Tita, same goes for all the listeners. So, from that perspective, only you can do this work in the way that you can do it, and I appreciate you chasing your passion and your purpose to do that work.

Speaker 1: 8:10

Where I'd like to start is one of the things about the gut. You know we hear gut, gut, gut all the time. Now, you know, back in naturopathic medical school, when I was first studying this stuff, over 20 years ago now, it was considered witchcraft medicine. What are you talking about? Like, you know, what are you talking about with the gut? And now everyone is talking about the gut, but one of the things I want to say with this is and I want to get your sort of take on this is that from my perspective, when I look at medicine, I'm very much into individualizing medicine.

Speaker 1: 8:46

Of course there are protocols that can be used and every protocol you see pretty quickly just a little bit. It's like I'm Italian, right, so like every Italian has their tomato sauce. We all know it's tomato sauce, but it's all slightly different. And so what I'm interested in getting from you is sort of those broad sort of general you know, like what's the tomato sauce, like what's the thing that we're talking about in the big picture ideas. And then I really do also want to talk to you about how do we individualize this stuff, because if you listen to you know sort of the stuff out there. As things become more popular we do start seeing an oversimplification of things, and you know everyone has their gut protocol now. So I'm curious what your take is on all this. What are the big ideas? Start us out sort of from the beginning, and then I want to kind of get into the specifics of colitis and Crohn's and then maybe the specifics of individuals.

Speaker 2: 9:40

Yeah, absolutely so. The first thing that we really started doing was distilling down what gut disease really is. We started looking at it on a mechanical wear and tear level. We started looking at it on a foreign body level and we started to see a lot of people dealing with the same things, but it was more of a spectrum of severity See Western medicine. I'm sure you learned this back in naturopathic school as well.

Speaker 2: 10:02

Ibs and IBD were very different conditions and they spent a lot of time trying to differentiate them. But even now, in modern papers and modern research, it's a Venn diagram and what they do is basically split them by level of severity. Whereas IBD might have blood, whereas IBS won't have blood, on the other hand, ibs can have blood without becoming inflammatory bowel disease, and so it really is a sliding scale of severity. And so, to break it down simply, I described it as wearing a pair of shoes without socks and you go for a walk and that heel just rubs red until it blisters, until it bleeds, and that's that progressive wear and tear from IBS to IBD. And I've seen it start from somebody who's got bloat today gastritis, tomorrow turns to gastroparesis, which leads to a SIBO condition. They get these IBS symptoms and then, months or years down the road, they get a Crohn's or colitis diagnosis. Sometimes it even goes from colitis to Crohn's, moving from the large bowel to the entire GI tract, and so you can see very easily this progression. And so what we started doing was breaking it down to its simplest parts, and I actually distilled it down really to a three-ring diagram of what we believe the roots were. And now we're 300 cases deep in the last two years alone. We'll do 200 cases this year at IBD, and it's all the same stuff, 99.9% of the time, minus your residual damage.

Speaker 2: 11:19

And so I actually have this three ring Venn diagram. The first ring is toxins. Now, obviously this will be all toxins, right? If you have a glass of water, when it overflows we have symptoms, and so toxins might be 10% of the glass. It might be 90% of the glass. Is it mold toxins? Is it environmental toxins? Is it food toxins? Is it endotoxins? Like what kind of toxins are your body experiencing? And so that's one of our rings.

Speaker 2: 11:43

The second one is microbial imbalances, and so primarily in the IBD world, we're seeing a ton of candida, a lot of fungal issues. Parasites are primary. Other issues we find any kind of bacterial dysbiosis tends to be secondary to that, which brings us back to toxins again. Heavy metals can create the landscape for fungus or parasites to come in and overgrow, and so we see these two things, a third of course, being diet, nutrient deficiencies, and so this will tie into other issues. Now it's a Venn diagram, so Venn diagram wouldn't be a Venn diagram without overlapping. And so if we overlap toxins and microbes, we can identify that there's going to be more layers to the problem.

Speaker 2: 12:20

So take, for example, toxins and diet and nutrient deficiencies these are going to exploit your genetic weak links. Right, when that chain gets pulled, what breaks first? That gene? I have gut issues running in my family. It doesn't mean I'm going to get gut disease, it means I'm prone to express inflammation. That way, I mean three people, jade could all sit in the same room and be exposed to mold. One will get arthritis, one will get bowel disease, one will get asthma. Out of four, who gets Hashimoto's? Right, it could be anything. And that's your weak link. And so toxins and nutrient deficiencies now we know we have the study of nutrigenomics, so it applies stressors to the genetic expression, creating issues.

Speaker 2: 12:57

Toxins, nutrient issues and microbe issues contribute to leaky gut, which is one of the pillars of, of course, autoimmunity, as well as triggers. So we have our three layers to gut disease your toxins, microbes and nutrients. Then you have your three legs of autoimmune disease, which is genetics, triggers and leaky gut. Once we distilled it down to these simple three and three, we can actually figure out that most cases of IBD are in fact not genetic. Even statistically speaking, they're not going to be these genetic autoimmune conditions. We have the data to back that up, and even the ones. They say 40 to 60% of people with Crohn's or colitis will have these antibodies. Well, other things can cause those antibodies Medications can cause them, stressors can cause them, ibuprofen can create these certain antibodies. So we have to understand that it goes a bit deeper than what meets the eye, and this is how we've distilled things down and I credit that to the success we're having.

Speaker 1: 16:23

Yeah, I love that. I think good frameworks lead to good medicine, you know, because otherwise medicine could become so complicated that you get lost. And just in case some of you were not following the discussion, ibs is irritable bowel syndrome, ibd inflammatory bowel disease, which includes ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, and so, yeah, so we got these, we got these. You know, it looks like six big sort of categories, three and three, that sort of overlap. So someone comes to see you. How do you begin breaking this down? What are the signs, what are the symptoms, what are the ways that you start to understand? All right, where does it lie on this map that you just painted for us?

Speaker 2: 17:03

Well, this is where things, I think, get really interesting, because symptomatology is an art form in itself. I'm sure you've done a lot of work in that. I know you've talked about it and a lot of the people listening. If you've got practitioners listening, they'll be familiar with symptoms in the functional space. But we believe symptoms trump testing. If someone comes in prime example parasites they can be very difficult to detect on a test, even a three and five day stool test, because a lot of them burrow, a lot of them hide, and this is where we'll see things like e-hysto or entamoeba histolytica, very common parasite. But a lot of these guys can really slice the gut lining, they can get into the muscles you can find lower back pain and hip pain and they can burrow into these crevices and these folds in the GI tract. So they're hard to really detect. They make enzymes that break themselves down and unless you get a live worm or protozoa or a live egg, we oftentimes will say canoparasites. But symptomatology states that parasites are very prevalent if we have symptoms ABCD, and so there are some really obvious ones. But I've got a list of 45 different symptoms for parasites that are very, very common, and so we have to look at number one what are your symptoms? And this is really the split shade In Western medicine.

Speaker 2: 18:11

We go to the doctor. The doctor says okay, what are your symptoms? Now that we have this understanding, we've done the blood work, we've done the scoping, we've taken the colonoscopies or the endoscopies, we've gone up and down inside and viewed visually. We have your symptoms. Therefore, this is your diagnosis. Unfortunately, western medicine has this ideology that disease is innate to the human body. It's just part of you. It is what it is. You have this condition. Therefore, this is what your body is going to be doing for the rest of your life, without acknowledging that disease is simply a byproduct of dysfunction. It's the wear and tear in the shoe. You've got a blister. So let's figure out what's wrong with the shoe, the sock, the size, the shape, right. This is where we have to go. So we build a history. We want to understand what's going on now.

Speaker 2: 18:53

Symptomatology right. What symptoms are you experiencing, both inside the gut and, almost more importantly, jade, what's going on outside of the gut? Because really your gut can only express symptoms in what? Seven, eight different ways? You can get bloated, gassy, constipation, diarrhea, nausea. You can get a bit of bloat, you might get blood no-transcript. But if we look outside of the gut to see what's happening in the joints, in the skin, the hair, the nails, the brain fog, are you grinding your teeth? Are you anemic? What is your blood work showing?

Speaker 2: 19:25

These can really point us to the root causes, and we've effectively distilled IBD down to three things. Number one we're going to see a lot, like I mentioned earlier, candida. Number two parasites. Number three clostridia. And so those dealing with gut or gut issues might be familiar with, like C diff, clostridia difficile, very gnarly, possibly lethal infection if you don't manage it. But Clostridia is really an umbrella. There's many Clostridia strains under the species and so we see a lot of overgrowth of that as well. And so once we figure out the history when, why and how this all started we look for your symptoms outside of the gut to point to what's happening inside, and then we can start to distill down what we believe the root causes are. We can start fixing that root and then we repair the residual damage as we go to the tissues, the microbiome, the immune system and its imbalances, all these different parts and pieces. Once we have that, the body can begin healing itself.

Speaker 1: 20:16

Yeah, that's beautiful. Let's talk a little bit about going from the IBS to the IBD before we get specifically on the IBD. So you know you're alluding to the idea that Western medicine, conventional medicine, wants to put things in buckets and once they do that, they see them essentially as separate, and you're alluding to this idea that you know really we can't separate this stuff, and so oftentimes irritable bowel syndrome is just a lesser version of, let's say, inflammatory bowel disease and it may never progress to that. But we can see sort of that journey that the immune system sort of takes, and so can you walk us through that a little bit and how you would begin to deal with that? So let's just start with irritable bowel syndrome and what are the treatments, what are sort of the things that you're doing to get the gut back to a healthy function, so that it does not progress and so that healing can actually happen.

Speaker 2: 21:16

Yeah, so the assertion would be and this might be heresy and blasphemy in some circles, but that's my assertion is that IBS irritable bowel syndrome and IBD inflammatory bowel disease are on the same spectrum. That's absolutely right, and so one is just a progressive version or a worsened version.

Speaker 1: 21:34

And I would agree with that, by the way, Josh, but I do think you're right. A lot of people would take issue with that, especially if they're conventionally trained.

Speaker 2: 21:41

Well, absolutely, but here's what we have to understand. Statistically speaking, 17% of people diagnosed with Crohn's or colitis have a previous diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome. But we also know, depending on the sample size, 60 to 72% of all Americans complain of some kind of gut issue once a week, associated with IBS cramping, pain, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, nausea, GERD right Something.

Speaker 1: 22:05

Me and my friends laugh. We're like all you have to do is go into a public restroom at a mall and you'll see how dysfunctional the American GI system is.

Speaker 2: 22:15

Oh man, I don't even like going to the bathroom at the gym. I try to avoid it because I can smell it.

Speaker 1: 22:24

I'm like that dude's got an issue. I don't like those spores. Yeah, as practitioners, right, you and I know that that is not normal. That's like one of these things that people sometimes we talk to me, I'm just go gas and bloating, constant loose stools Like this stuff is not a normal function of the human GI tract and some people are shocked to actually hear that you know. But I mean, I would I oftentimes say all of America has irritable bowel syndrome. I agree Basically what they're doing. And one thing I want to say here, and just kind of see what you think about this, that I tell my patients it just drives us home.

Speaker 1: 22:54

If me and all of you listeners and Josh all went hiking and we all picked up Giardia, what's the body going to do? Well, the body is intelligent. We learned this. You know that the body has its own healing capacity. It is going to do everything it can to get that stuff out of the system, and so you are going to get cramping, you are going to get watery diarrhea. Now, if you're eating foods that the body doesn't like, what do you think it's going to do? It's going to do a lot of the same thing, and so the body is smart and we do have to listen to this. And don't even get me started, josh, on the fact that we don't know what bidets are and wipes in this country.

Speaker 1: 23:37

That's a whole other conversation, but I'm curious what your approach is to IBS for people, because then I want to get into IBD, because I also see them as directly linked.

Speaker 2: 23:48

Sure.

Speaker 2: 23:49

So we look at IBS. We have to understand there's some really basic layers. We all talk about what to eat. We get that right. If your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize it as food, don't eat it. Simple as that. But we rarely talk about how to eat and that's a very simple thing for IBS and IBD. Now, the protocols that we apply to Crohn's colitis we also apply to IBS.

Speaker 2: 24:08

This is kind of a catch-all blanket. Of course everyone's going to be individualized based on their circumstance, residual damage, et cetera, et cetera. But for the most part number one let's address how we're eating. Are you on the go swallowing food like a pelican? Are you not chewing? Are you high-stressed? We have to get the nervous system in check First of all. When the nervous system's in check, of course we know peristalsis will be in check. We're going to have better stomach acid production, better digestive enzyme production. We're going to digest, break down and absorb. So that's going to take care of that nutrient deficiency, the first layer of our gut disease, trifecta on the Venn diagram. So that's number one.

Speaker 2: 24:45

Number two is there any toxic exposure? Let's deal with that. Are you being exposed to things on a regular basis? I had someone write into my podcast asking me what to do. They work in road construction. They're breathing in hot tar fumes all the time, very carcinogenic, and so what sort of things can we do? So? A let's remove the toxins. B let's look at your detox and drainage pathways. And so when we're dealing with IBD or again IBS, we have to consider that drainage and detox is huge, and this is a step most people miss. I get people all the time coming and going. I've done a parasite protocol, I've done a fungal protocol. Why aren't I getting better? Well, if you're doing these protocols A not getting better. B you're feeling worse. What is your drainage and detox pathways doing? What's happening here? And so we have what's called enterohepatic recirculation.

Speaker 2: 25:29

Now, this is where the bile 95% of your bile is recycled. It's very expensive for your body to make, and so what happens? It's produced in the liver and it's sent to the gallbladder and it's put into the small intestine and you can start breaking down things and it'll absorb and it'll help detoxify. It'll act as kind of a binder for a bunch of junk and we can filter it out. But if you're junked up, your filtration process is messy. If you've got a lot of excess growth of bacteria and other junk in the system we produce this enzyme that's really going to start junking things up as well in the body, called beta glucuronidase. It can be a great thing to help you clear stuff, but it's also going to hold on to things and recycle if we don't have good drainage. So you get people with this elevated beta glucuronidase and junky bile, the recirculating toxins in hormones and other junk and reabsorbing. This is where you'll get men having hormonal issues or women having PMS symptoms and recycle, recycle and so your drainage is junked up, your bioflow is messy, your liver is toxified, so, no matter what you do, we're not going to empty out properly.

Speaker 2: 26:28

It's like we have two cups right. One is the toxins actively in the body right Now. We can't take this red cup, this toxin cup, and just dump it out. It has to go into the drainage cup, so call this your blue cup. So the red cup of toxins active have to go into the blue cup. Your liver, your limbs, your kidney, your skin, your GI, even your lungs can expire some things, and so we have to go from red cup toxins to blue cup drainage and then blue cup drainage goes out of the body through feces, through urine, through sweating and expiration, all these things, but most of us have a full blue cup.

Speaker 2: 27:02

And so what happens? We try to empty our blue cup of toxins into the blue cup, but it overflows. We end up getting sick. We get headaches and migraines and joint pain and flu-like symptoms. We call this even herxing or herxheimer reactions a common term where you're increasing toxicity faster than you can open it, and so we have to work on drainage and proper detox pathways, not just detoxing your liver. That's a blue cup issue. We have to empty the blue cup itself, and this is something I think most practitioners miss, and a lot of people end up going cyclical where they well, I got some of my issue and now I'm still sick. Or I tried to detox and I got sicker because we miss drainage, we miss bile and we miss the gallbladder as well. That's a very important step.

Speaker 1: 27:41

Yeah, I love that you're walking us through this because from my perspective, this is where protocol medicine goes wrong. This is because oftentimes you might have a I'm doing a gut protocol, but it's not just the body, is not just involved with the gut, it's a holistic system. So if we're listening to what Josh is saying, let's just repeat a little bit. It's like look, you got to be careful of what you're putting in your body and you also have to honor the way the body wants to process these foods. Slow down, chew your foods, get gastric secretions going, get the enzymes going, get your nutrients there. You also then have to honor these detox pathways and then, of course, then we might start doing some of the more gut based protocols, probiotics and other things that most people are jumping right to, and of course, you can do all three of these at once.

Speaker 1: 28:32

But I do think a lot of these steps are being missed and from my perspective, it would be like, you know, if you keep eating Froot Loops and Cinnabons, you know, but you're also, you know and you're doing a detox protocol probably not going to work.

Speaker 1: 28:46

If you're eating perfect foods, you're not getting the detox stuff right and you're adding in good quality probiotics probably not going to get the results, and because we don't always know and it's very difficult to do individualized medicine, sometimes you do want to make sure you hit all of the steps and then usually clinically, you'll start to see which of those are going to be more important for certain individuals. And, josh, you already alluded to this, a lot of this happens in you know, our, you know taking the cases and the histories and some of the testing will do. But I love that approach and so do you have anything to then add? On the other side? You know now that we've kind of dealt with quality of food, you know digestion and we're dealing with the sort of detox and drainage pathways. What else are we doing now? Is this when you get into some more of the, you know the gut-based protocols, I mean, everyone listening, you know, is going to want to know about you know what about probiotics and what about these kinds of things.

Speaker 2: 29:43

Yeah, absolutely so. Probiotics first of all, as a quick sidebar here I'm very selective and I don't actually use as much as people might think, unless if someone's got recurring C diff. In that case I might use very specific bifidobacterium and lactobacillus strains which have been shown in studies to help prevent recurring C diff infections in those undergoing antibiotic therapy, which we see recurring C diff very frequently in gut disease, because it's an opportunistic microbe, it loves an inflamed environment and it will take over when it has the opportunity. That's the opportunistic word. And so probiotics I sometimes use, but not very often. I might use them to bind onto mold. But you're right. We're here now, we've gone through the toxins and the food and how we're eating what we're eating. We've taken care of our drainage and detox pathways. Now we might move on to a flush. We can actually push things through the liver, through the kidneys and through the guts. We can do that too. But then the next step is let's go after. We'll call them the foreign invaders right Now in IBD.

Speaker 2: 30:48

Very commonly in IBS and there are studies suggesting 83% of cases of IBS are actually caused by SIBO or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, which of course can be caused by, say, parasites. Parasites love. They hang out around things like the ileocecal valve, gallbladder right. These bile ducts will hang around some of these very important areas, even messing with your open and close mechanisms, right. I always think of it like Star Wars or Star Trek with the blast doors. They open and close in timing, but if those are messed up, things come and go as they please. We get these passages of bacteria and overgrowth and our pH gets messed up. There are certain parts of the intestine that are better for absorbing certain things and doing certain jobs and they all get mangled. So parasites, if they're there, typically they have to go first.

Speaker 2: 34:35

I dealt with a lot of issues in my life with my gut. For many, many years I've had the blood in the stool. I've had 15 bowel movements a day with urgency weight loss. I was a strength athlete. It didn't help. I was using steroids at the time because it really messed my gut and my liver. But I went from doing 500, 190 pounds Jay, not a big guy. I'm picking up 550 on my deadlift. I'm doing Atlas stones and strongman, picking up 375 and racking it and I was a strong guy for my size. But then my gut popped off and lifting 50 pounds after. That was exhausting. And so I've been there but I couldn't get rid of all these fungal issues because my drainage pathways, they were blocked up, yes, but even after that was cleared I had parasites. So I couldn't physically like they can physically block a lot of these ways and it also can dominate the immune pathways your body needs, like the cleanup crew, to really get things done.

Speaker 2: 35:26

They dominate the manpower, so to speak. You've got so many fires but only so many firefighters, so taking care of the important stuff, oftentimes that's parasites. And so if one of your symptoms are parasites, if you get somebody who comes in with all the classic parasite stuff agnosis of SIBO, pain on palpation of the liver and gallbladder, discomfort, pain in the back, seasonal allergies, rectal itching, grinding of the teeth, anemia these types of things can be very indicative. Dry skin psoriasis, eczema can be very indicative of parasites. And if that's the case, we often have to do that first before moving on to things like fungus.

Speaker 2: 36:00

Now, fungus again we can look at acne outside of the gut. We can look at joint pain, brain fog, white film on the tongue, mycotoxins, maybe there's neurological issues, numbness, tingling, all kinds of electric shocks. If you step on carpets and rugs and get frequently static shocks. It could be mold toxicity. So there's all kinds of layers but typically parasites have to come first and then second to that we can look at the other organisms, like fungus, like costridia and these other things that tend to cause bowel disease. But it is a very structured process. Some people do parasites three days. We had a 15-year-old kid got a 38-inch worm. His mom picked it up with chopsticks and took a photo. It was bizarre, never seen that in my life 38-inch worm within like two or three days. Some people feel nothing for eight weeks.

Speaker 1: 36:51

Then boom, they're pouring out. Yeah. Yeah, I'm wondering what are the things you're using for that primarily? If you have a couple tools, supplements, what are?

Speaker 2: 36:54

you using for parasites Without any affiliation with them. Specifically, I love Cellcor products. They do an amazing job. They're some of the best of the best in the world for drainage. So I'll use supplements like Tudka, right, I'll use that for drainage. We'll use drainage activators that they have and they have a phenomenal parasite protocol.

Speaker 2: 37:10

But, but, but, but. There are some people try to jump in right. All this big stack of parasites, they'll use triphala and kutaja and all these other herbs and they'll stack them all together and the walnuts and the clove and thyme and oregano and they wonder why they feel ill? Because your drainage still can't keep up. So I always recommend start slow, right.

Speaker 2: 37:31

One of my mentors worked with me for many years, been teaching me most of what I know Curtis Gillespie Sayers big shout out. He's created this parasite protocol that we utilize. We have a beginner, intermediate and advanced. We have to start people slow and there's an ideology behind parasites, similar to antibiotics, where if you go a little dose, if you were to take one antibiotic pill every third day, every seventh day, on and off, you'd have mega resistant microbes. And they say the same with parasites, which is true to a degree, but we find just starting with something basic like mimosa putica while you're supporting drainage, getting sweating, going red light and sauna and acupuncture.

Speaker 2: 38:12

Gallbladder flushes I've actually working on my flushes. This week I've done two coffee enemas. This week I'm doing a gallbladder flush with the Epsom salts and olive oil, lemon juice. There's a whole protocol for this stuff and then we can start to get the mimosa putica to start sticking onto some of these guys and then we can start stacking in other layers of anti-parasitic herbs and protocols based on tolerance. But if you're getting bloody stool, bloody urine, headaches, migraines, allergies, itching, rashing, you're going too fast. We have to slow it down.

Speaker 1: 38:35

Yeah, yeah. So just to kind of start to reiterate and just for those of you listening who are following. So I just like to repeat because it's just very nice for all of us to kind of understand some of this and when we have like drinking from a fire hose.

Speaker 2: 38:48

so thank you yeah exactly Right.

Speaker 1: 38:49

It's a lot right. So it looks like, based on if there are very strong parasite reactions, you may begin those protocols right away. But the typical approach is get your nutrition squared away, get your nervous system squared away, get your detox and drainage pathway squared away. Then we might begin to look at parasite function and do some liver supports and things like that and we're moving on through there. So I wanted to talk about the individual nature of people, but you're doing a really nice job of showing us where this goes. So hopefully you all are hearing that you know you start going down these basic pathways.

Speaker 1: 39:28

It's like it looks like Josh is telling us there's these big blocks that you need to sort of take care of and then, based on the individual symptoms and other things, there are different directions you can go.

Speaker 1: 39:40

Then you start maybe focusing more on, you know, liver, gallbladder health, or then you start to focus a little bit more on this looks like we need to focus a little bit more on parasites, etc.

Speaker 1: 39:50

So I really love the way. It's very clear to me and hopefully it is clear to all you listeners the approach here. Now what I'd love to do, josh, is just go into the IVD, because I know this is your specialty. I would love for you to just help people just briefly understand I know this is your specialty. I would love for you to just help people just briefly understand I know the practitioners know this but the difference between sort of the two major irritable bowel diseases or, I'm sorry, inflammatory bowel diseases and then, briefly, the approach here. I'm imagining you're going to be telling us it's a lot of the same stuff to get down to this level, but I'm really interested in especially sort of the difference between the two and any mechanisms or any sort of you know things you can teach us about why this begins to happen and we start getting into an autoimmune sort of diagnosis.

Speaker 2: 40:40

Yeah, for sure. And so I'll actually get into what I call the autoimmune or the gut disease ladder as well, something I've also created as sort of an illustration of how these develop. So really the difference there's two umbrellas, like you mentioned Jade of IBD or inflammatory bowel disease, that's Crohn's and colitis. Now I look at Crohn's as being a worse version of colitis we kind of alluded to that earlier. Colitis or ulcerative colitis. Again, spectrum is really the large intestine we have to look at this in. Typically it's inflamed in chunks. You might get proctitis, where just the lower rectum's inflamed, maybe it's 5, 8, or 15 centimeters, whatever it might be and sometimes you can get what's called pancolitis, where the entire large intestine is all inflamed.

Speaker 2: 41:19

There's different, varying levels of colitis, and then there's also ulcerative colitis, which is when that inflammation progresses to an ulcerated state and we get sort of like these red spots and blisters and open sores which can of course bleed. Now, colitis, not only is it in strips but it's also very surface level. Picture you fell down and scraped your knee on the pavement. It hurts but you'll live. It's not that big of a deal. Now, crohn's disease, on the other hand, can be anywhere from mouth to anus and it actually goes what we call Peyer's patches, which is sort of spotty like a Dalmatian. You can get anywhere inside or outside the GI. You can get ulcers and sores in the mouth. You can get perianal fissures and sores, so you can get them actually on the glutes. You can have them in the small intestine, the large, all over the place. And so Crohn's disease also has much higher risks of things like cancers and other problems, primarily, I believe, due to the level of inflammation.

Speaker 2: 42:12

Whereas ulcerative colitis or colitis is very surface, like you scuffed your knee, crohn's disease goes deeper into the tissue, so it's multi-layered. They're more prone to fissures and fistulas where these things will actually burrow multi, multi layers. And this is where that client you were talking about earlier actually had a rectovaginal fistula where a hole was formed. From one tissue to another burrows these tunnels sometimes, and so I look at Crohn's disease as being much more severe on the spectrum, and so I look at this as sort of a gut disease ladder. If you'll bear with me while I try to visually explain this, you picture a four rung ladder. There's four steps, so to speak. Now the first step will go left to right, on the bottom left, this first rung.

Speaker 2: 42:54

We have a healthy gut, no issues. You're like Usain Bolt of gut. You can eat what you want. You can eat rocks, like my wife. She's great. I look at rocks and I get gut issues. And so we have a healthy gut.

Speaker 2: 43:00

But we slide along this spectrum. We develop IBS. This is your irritable bowel syndrome, so a little bit of bloating, constipation, et cetera. Well, as that heals, so to speak, we'll go back to the shoe analogy rubs, raw wears and tears. We climb up a rung Now.

Speaker 2: 43:13

We go from IBS to IBD, be it Crohn's or colitis. Some people skip this rung, but you get the idea it progresses and worsens, and so whether that's somebody who had their gallbladder removed, which we can talk a whole spectrum of things there Maybe they developed a mold infection which progressed from slight IBS to IBD. I had a client had that happen to them recently, and sometimes it can take many years, weeks or months, but it progresses. So we go from healthy to IBS. We climb up a run from IBS to IBD. But then we're on the third rung now, as things progress and get worse and worse. Now we go from, say, colitis to Crohn's disease. Again, some people skip this rung now as things progress and get worse and worse. Now we go from, say, colitis to Crohn's disease. Again, some people skip this rung, depending on a lot of factors. But there's also a percentage of people who had colitis, so just inflammation in the colon, that progressively got worse until it was their entire GI tract, mouth to anus.

Speaker 2: 44:02

And then I look at the autoimmune. So we climb up another rung. Autoimmunity can be minor or severe, and as you get further down the spectrum you can then stack and layer extra autoimmune diseases. But the simplest way to put it is this you have a cup full of water. When that cup overflows, you have problems. The more it overflows, the more problems you have. Now, what fills that cup? Toxins, parasites, candida, clostridia, bad food, diet, stress, whatever it is. That cup fills up more and more, and the more it fills, the more prone you are to disease. The more overflow, the worst things get. And so we have to look at the total accumulation of inflammation and wear and tear on the immune system.

Speaker 2: 44:44

Going back to autoimmune disease right, you can get one autoimmune, but as it gets worse and worse, your immune system's overdrawn. It's high alert. Now you have multiples Every three to six years. You got another, now it's MS, now it's lupus, now it's Crohn's, now it's blah, blah, blah. There's a hundred plus autoimmune diseases that can stack, and it's not uncommon for people to have many, many going on and then for them to never know. You know one of the things with very light autoimmune conditions.

Speaker 1: 45:06

We sometimes we have to go and look for these things. And the other thing I'll just say you know, I know the practitioners who are listening to this are following this, but for those who aren't practitioners, one of the first things you might ask yourself is how come some people can eat whatever they want and so-called do whatever they want and never seem to have any problems. Well, seem is exactly that. You don't know. But certainly there are other things here from genetics, from you know being breastfed as a kid, from being raised in a farm and you know getting, you know being out in the environment and all the things.

Speaker 1: 45:49

There's just too many things that are so complex that we don't know all the factors that would have led to someone being this robust. And so you just have to remember that it's not as simple as what people are doing right now. There's genetics involved, there's the way they develop, there's a lot of other things that are going on. But I love the way you've sort of mapped this out for us and it sounds like and I'll just ask the question just so people can hear it, but it sounds like while you specialize in inflammatory bowel disease and those autoimmune conditions in the gut. The way that you would deal with most all other autoimmune conditions would be this gut-based approach, if I'm hearing you correct.

Speaker 2: 46:30

I think that'd be accurate. You know I'm not a specialist in all autoimmune disease by any means and again, I don't believe Crohn's and colitis is always autoimmune. I think it's a vast over-exaggeration and most GPs or even GI specialists who are going in aren't actually testing for antibodies anyway. They just classify you by diagnostic criteria, looking at your symptoms and scopes and scans, and they say, okay, you have this disease, which is autoimmune, without checking your antibodies. And again, many things can cause those antibodies. So is it truly autoimmune and have we doomed these people to a lifetime of immunosuppressive drugs?

Speaker 2: 47:03

But talking to doctors like Terry Walls, right MS specialist, she's got an amazing story reversed her on MS and she was saying that leaky gut. You'd be extremely hard pressed to find anyone. Now there's no absolutes in medicine, but damn near 100% of people who have an autoimmune condition will have an associated gut issue. And this goes back to famously Hippocrates, right Back in 460 or 370 BCE. You said all diseases begin in the gut, right. Somehow he knew back then and we know today. And you're going to be extremely hard-pressed to find anyone with an autoimmune condition who doesn't have some kind of underlying gut issue, which opens up a whole world of interesting theories about things like cancers, and you name it.

Speaker 1: 47:46

Yeah, yeah. So well said, josh, and I think you are. You explained all of this so incredibly well, in fact, probably the best that I've heard any practitioner do, so I just want to say thank you. Thank you so much for that, and I think it's incredibly valuable. I want to give you just a chance to add anything else that you want to add that you think we may have missed here. I mean, just given a ton of information, but is there anything else that you think we should be aware of or that you want to add?

Speaker 2: 48:17

uh, before we begin wrapping up, I think the last thing I'd like to say is this this is kind of everything. It's not just about the here, the now with the gut and gut disease and gut issues. A diagnosis is simply a word that practitioners use to describe your symptoms in a snapshot. You tell me this word. I know 85% of what I need to know about what's going on with you. The challenge is Western medicine. Like I was saying earlier, they take this word like cookbook medicine. They take your symptoms, they put you in a box of diagnosis. They give you this label. With that label we go drugs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Speaker 2: 48:53

And at the bottom of that list we probably cut out the organ, be it a hysterectomy, or they take your gallbladder out or your colon out, and that is a really garbage way to do medicine. There is no diagnosis. I believe that can't be helped, adjusted or completely reversed, whatever degree on the spectrum, wherever you are. We've had people with their full colon removed who can still see improvements, and so I want to encourage you if you're a practitioner giving a diagnosis or you're a patient receiving a diagnosis, don't accept it at face value, because a diagnosis is just a word that really defines your symptoms. It tells you what is going on, where it is happening, but it has nothing to do with the why. And that's the most critical part of medicine. I think people forget.

Speaker 1: 49:37

Yeah, I love that thought and you know, I oftentimes think of it as like a personality trait. Right, we all had a particular personality trait when we were 18 years old. We were a specific way. I look at it a lot like that when I'm looking at diagnosis and a lot of my work now is all about, you know, identity restructuring restructuring the way we perceive the world, that we perceive ourselves and I really think that I love the way you put that that diagnoses are really about personality traits and none of us are the same or even would want to be the same as we were at 18 years old. We learned, we grew, we did certain things, we saw our behaviors and our patterns and other things, and we grew and got better.

Speaker 1: 50:18

I think what you're alluding to here is that most people just don't see lifestyle that way. They just go. Well, I've got a disease now and I just keep doing. What I'm doing and what I oftentimes go is different environment, different personality is often what we're looking at. So, Josh, honestly, I appreciate you so much. I hope you all will check Josh out. Josh Deck, clinical nutritionist, Tell us where they all can find. I know you have a podcast that I'm going to be on soon. I believe we're going to try to get that done.

Speaker 2: 50:50

We'll have to reschedule that.

Speaker 1: 50:51

We'll have to reschedule that, but it's called the reversible podcast, Right and and where can they find you? So, Josh, make sure you check. Check out his podcast. You guys can see he's a brilliant guy and an incredible educator. Happy to have you here. Check out the reversible podcast Also. Check out the reversible podcast also. Where can they find you on social media?

Speaker 2: 51:11

and any other resources you want to point them towards. Yeah, I can be found on facebook, instagram. We're learning the rest. It's a big job, but that's just josh deck dot health and the easiest way to find everything you can find reversible the ultimate gut health podcast. You can find contact information, social information. Everything you need can be found in one place on our website. That's gutsolutionca. That's all singular ca for Canada, gutsolutionca.

Speaker 1: 51:35

Thank you so much, Josh. Hang on the line. I'm just going to shut us down and make sure everything loads up. But for all of you, hope you enjoyed today's podcast and we will see you at the next show.