Transcription
Hey everyone, I hope you are doing well and staying safe. We want to chat with you today a little bit about mucosal immunity, which we talked about in the first talk as it relates to the gut. So, if you haven't heard the first talk yet, you might want to go back and listen to that later.
In the initial talk, I talked about the importance of secretory IgA and mucosal immunity. And how the lining of the mucosal tissues of the body – that's the nasal passageways, the intestinal tract, the respiratory tract, the vaginal tract, the urinary tract – all these lining or mucosal tissues are protected against viruses, bacteria, yeasts, and bacteria is all these bugs that can invade us by this stuff called secretory IgA.
And so, in the general naturopathic principles, they've been, you know, I was taught thirty years ago, I've been going on for hundreds of years, yeah. The idea is that mucosal immunity, or this this barrier that protects us against invading organisms, is super important, and we want to protect that and keep it strong. And we think about the mucosal tissues now in the era of a respiratory virus, right, in terms of the nasal passageways and the mouth and the throat, and making sure that those areas are really strong. But, you know, in a general naturopathic theory, it extends also out to the intestinal tract lining and the mucosal tissues of the digestive tract.
And one of the primary reasons for that is because the gut lining is just big, right? It's a lot of space there, and it takes up, as I think the small intestine is like the surface area of a tennis court or something, where it's a huge amount of space kind of smushed into these little tubes. And there's a lot of mucosal lining tissue there. And around 60% of your entire immune system is centered in your gut. And so, if there's irritation or damage to the gut, immune response that has a systemic effect.
And that is probably the the most fundamental concept of functional medicine in my mind is that the digestive tract is the mother of the rest of the body. The digestive tract feeds the body, right? So, feeds your nervous system, your cardiovascular system, your immune system is literally in the gut. And that in functional medicine, you know, 101, what we all learn is that if a person has a gut problem, they're gonna have an immune problem, they're gonna have a cardiovascular problem, they might end up with, you know, a problem with their blood sugar or joint pain, which stems from, you know, the gut issue in the first place.
And so, in order to entirely strengthen and and beef up your immune system, you have to address the fact that 60% of it's in the gut, and you have to strengthen the mucosal tissues in the digestive tract lining to have a really robust immune response. So, that's what I want to talk about today. And so, we're kind of making these talks a little more informal. I'm going to show you some lab, we're gonna show you some research studies, so we can just kind of think about this as a group and and wonder, why my digestive tract, you know, the question really is, why is my digestive tract even related to any of this? You know, and how is it that they're these good bacteria in the gut that are the, you know, primaries in some way, source of defense against bad bacteria, viruses, and parasites, and all the things that can go on.
So, you know, first of all, I just want to talk about food and what are the practical things that you can do dietarily. So, what you don't want, what you want to do is feed your microbiome and good bacteria. And what you don't want to do is inflame and damage your gut lining, because that damages the mucosal response, and your, what you're damaging is your immune system. So, if you drink a lot of alcohol, eat a lot of sugar, eat just, you know, pro-inflammatory junky foods that are processed foods, you're gonna be damaging your immune system every time you take a bite or something like that.
And, you know, every time you take a bite of food, you really got the choice there. Is this a pro-inflammatory food that's gonna mess up my gut and my immunity, or is this an anti-inflammatory food that's protective? So, what are the super, super anti-inflammatory foods? And the number one, probably all-time anti-inflammatory thing that you could consume is turmeric or curcumin, massively powerful. Ginger's up there too. Many of the spices that we eat, oregano, basil, cinnamon, all these things have huge antioxidant, anti-inflammatory effects. And it's not that complicated. You have a bowl of oatmeal, you put a little cinnamon on it, right? And you're getting an anti-inflammatory effect that's going to be stimulating and improving your immune system.
If you have a ton of sugar, like a, I don't know, what people eat for breakfast, like a donut or two donuts for breakfast, that's gonna have an inflammatory, immune destructive effect. If you really want to get into it, you can read some of those old books like "Sugar Blues" and "Lick the Sugar Habit" and talk all about how damaging sugar is for your immune system. And part of the way that that's modulated is because it is an inflammatory trigger that's going to affect your digestive tract.
So, a lot of this is within our control. And of course, you not only want to not damage the gut, but you want to encourage the microbiome to grow out and be healthy. And that's done with what we call prebiotic-containing foods. And we can do also by prebiotic supplements, but it's probably easier to just eat a piece of asparagus or have some, you know, black bean soup, then is to take a bunch of supplements that are prebiotics.
Now, if you're kind of behind the ball on this and your gut's not doing that great, you know, food is going to still be the primary treatment, but you can accelerate the repair process by using probiotic or prebiotic supplements to help balance out your microbiome. And the probiotics are a little dicey. I can show you some more detail on that in a minute, but prebiotics are guaranteed. Any human being on the planet can use prebiotics from foods, or, you know, that's gonna be fiber from foods. And you can just Google prebiotic-containing foods and you'll get a nice little list. I don't have to bore you with the details on that, but, um, that will feed your good or a healthy microbiome, right?
And then probiotics, you can see with some of the labs here, we're gonna look at in a minute, that there's some different ways you can do probiotics. If you do the testing, you can get really specific sometimes. And so, here's a GI Effects test. This was from a lab company called Genova Diagnostics. I run this on patients all the time. If you're interested in becoming a patient, you can sign up. We take phone patients, and you can talk with my office about that. That's Kalish Wellness.com. And let's look at it. It's kind of complicated, but let's look at the important part first.
So, this is really cool. You can measure this stuff, you guys. So, here you can see on the test, it says commensal bacteria by PCR. These are the normal or healthy bacteria that should be present. And they have really complicated names, and there's a lot of them. In fact, there's probably trillions of them, and there's only 24 on this page, where, you know, there's more than we could ever count, right? But we're going to focus on one of them today, just because that seems a little easier than trying to talk about trillions of organisms.
And then when we want to talk about specifically is called Akkermansia muciniphila. Where we've seen a philia, when people pronounce it, Akkermansia muciniphila. And you can measure if this is at a good level or if it's low. If it's low, you're in trouble. If it's at a good level, you're, you know, there's one plus in the plus column for your immune system. Akkermansia muciniphila. And we'll take a look at that again. There's all these other organisms you can measure.
And as I was kind of alluding to a moment ago, with some of these probiotics, you can actually measure the more popular probiotics. I'll just show you here. You can measure Lactobacillus levels in your gut. And if those are low, like this person's, then low and behold, a Lactobacillus probiotic would help a lot, okay? So, that's kind of cool to know. And then there's another famous probiotic that's in a lot of supplements, Bifidobacterium, okay? If you're Bifidobacterium or low, then you can take a Bifidobacterium probiotic. And this person could take one that has Lactobacillus and Bifida, and it would improve their microbiome because both those markers are quite low. So, that's a way to get really specific about probiotics. You can also just guess, I suppose, with a lot of people do. And they're also the spore-based organisms that are really good. There's a lot of new things coming out all the time with probiotics. So, you have a lot of options there. If you're not doing the labs, you can take something that's more generic. If you're doing the labs, sometimes you can get kind of specific and get focused.
Okay, so I almost want to skip around here and talk a little bit about other things. I prepared a little document here. And then what are we really talking about? And I'm going to go through again, these are research studies that I've just been looking at lately that'll describe some of the things that we're looking at. And let me show you here, a little schematic of your gut. And this is crazy, you guys, that this is actually happens. When I first learned about this, I was like, there's no way this is really true, but it's true.
So, here are the gut bacteria, okay? These little green guys, that's the gut bacteria, the good ones. Right here are your immune cells, like your T cells. And they have these complicated names like IL-22 and T-regs and Th17 and gosh knows what else, you know, there's like a million different names. But basically, that's your immune system, right? Let me blow this up so you can see a little bit. And I, here's the crazy part, is that these immune cells, these are in your body, right? This is your intestinal lining here. So, this is, this is stool that's passing through, your food that's passing through. And this over here is the immune system, your immune cells. They're hunkered down, they're sitting inside your body. But guess what? They're under direct regulation and control.
You see these green arrows by the gut bacteria? It is like a science fiction movie. See here, this B. fragilis, that's a gut bacteria. It has a direct control mechanism that penetrates right through your gut lining and tells your T cells what to do. That's crazy that that's happening. Just think how crazy that is. Yeah, let me say this again. These are your immune cells inside your body, down here, T-regs, Th17, IL bloody bloody, right? Down these complicated names. And these immune cells that are fighting everything and the bad stuff inside your body, these days everyone's worried about viruses, but it could also be bacteria and parasites and other bad bugs. These immune cells that fight bad bugs are under direct control of the gut bacteria in the microbiome, okay? That arrow there is saying that gut bacteria makes this stuff called PSA, and that's the signal that your immune cells respond to. That's crazy town.
In other words, a lot of these immune cells are just gonna sit around and not know what to do unless they're told what to do by the good gut bacteria. That's the situation that we're in. You protect your good gut bacteria, they signal your immune cells in your body what to do. So, when you eat a probiotic-containing food or a prebiotic-containing food, right, like some kimchi or some sauerkraut as probiotics, or yogurt or miso soup that has probiotics, or if you eat a prebiotic-containing food that has some good quality fiber in it, like beans, that's gonna feed the microbiome. That's a fuel supply for the microbiome. And that in turn regulates the immune inside your body. That's how crazy this is. You think the immune cells would be telling you, you know, would have their own independent say in things, but they're regulated by our microbiome, okay? And if you don't believe me, let's look at some articles here, because when I first learned this, I was just like, that is not possible. Who would have ever thought of that?
Okay, so number one, here's, and this is just random studies that I pulled up, all right? So, let's see here. Gut microbiota, microbiota is another name for microbiome. So, there's slightly different scientific terms, but it's gut bacterial regulation of T cells. It's what we just saw a picture of. Your gut bacteria regulate T cells. And I just read this abstract here. This is from the Annals of something, Immunology, Annual Review of Immunology, just like that. This is a fancy journal, right? The intestinal microbiota play a crucial role in influencing the development of host immunity. That's you. Okay? So, your gut bacteria play a crucial role in developing your immune system. And in turn, the immune system also acts to regulate the microbiota through intestinal barrier maintenance and immune exclusion. Normally, these interactions are homeostatic. That means that they balance out, tightly controlled and organized by both innate and adaptive immune responses. Okay?
So, what they're saying here again is that your microbiome, the gut bacteria, and your immune cells are impacting one another. You've got bacteria tell your immune cells to do stuff, your immune cells tell your gut bacteria what to do, and they balance each other. This is sort of a dance or balance or harmony in a healthy person, okay? Again, here's the image. Your gut bacteria, these little arrows, are, you know, directing and controlling your immune cells. And then in turn, the immune cells are sending signals back out to the gut bacteria. It's a two-way street. So, here they're showing some of these cells directing out, right? The immune cells directing messages out. You can see here. And then these incoming messages into your body from the gut bacteria regulating your immune cells.
All right, let's look at other studies. You can kind of see where this is headed, yeah. This is from the journal Nature, very well-known scientific journal. Demystifying the manipulation of host immunity, that's your body, metabolism. And forget about tumors, not talking about cancer, but they are also talking about extra-intestinal tumors. So, demystifying the manipulation of your immune system and your metabolism. Your metabolism refers to how you're burning fuel, right? The trillions of microorganisms and their gut microbiome have attracted much attention. Blah, blah, blah. Let's see where's a good part here. We summarized the latest evidence on the involvement of the gut microbiome and host immunity and metabolism. So, not only do these gut bacteria help control and regulate immune function, but they also regulate, you know, how well you burn body fat, basically, and how well your metabolism is working. Then they talk about the effects of the microbiome on cancers as well, and the immune response. So, they're going to review that in this article. And so, again, we think about it, you know, if you have, if we're not really done by cancer day, but, you know, regulate, you know, improving cancer, reducing the risk of cancer has a lot to do with, obviously, with your immune system as well. So, they're going to talk about that in this article and the strategies to modulate the gut microbiome and future areas of research, right? So, this is something that's in all the medical journals all the time. You see this stuff now.
Now, here's my favorite bug. One of the best scientific journals in the world called Science, right? Akkermansia muciniphila induces intestinal adaptive immune responses during homeostasis. So, they're saying this Akkermansia bug helps your intestinal immune response. Induces it, it creates it, it builds it. Context shapes anti-commensal immunity. Gut bacteria, Akkermansia, is associated with protection from obesity. That's a nice thing. Enhanced wound healing, pretty important. Anti-tumor responses, right? Back to the cancer issue from the previous article. And so, they all found that this microbe induces antigen-specific immunoglobulins, IgG1 antibodies generated by B cells with CD4 T cells help. But, right? So, again, we're talking about this gut bug triggering these various aspects of the immune system. Crazy that this happens.
And remember, we're like, what does that really mean abstractly? We don't really know. It's kind of complicated. We can measure Akkermansia on a stool test. It's called a GI Effects test. And if that's low, there are nutritional strategies, diet strategies, even some herbs that will increase Akkermansia. This research study I just read the other day on berberine increasing Akkermansia. You can take an herb to bring it up. You could eat some beans and bring it up. There's lots of ways you can correct these microbiome imbalances. Crazy, isn't it? And these are mainstream journals. We're not talking about some guy at the health food store. Like when I was in college, you know, it was like I wore Birkenstocks, I ate sprouts, and I was really into this stuff. But those days are over, you know? This is like mainstream now.
Now, here's just another kind of schematic about the microbiome. So, here in the middle is your intestinal tract. And then what does it do? The microbiome. It protects against pathogens, right? That's the bad guys, viruses, bacteria, yeast, parasites, etc. The microbiome also helps make vitamins, like vitamin K, vitamin B12. It is important in immune system development, we're talking about right now. It promotes intestinal angiogenesis, as blood vessels growing, involved in fat storage, fat burning, helps with short-chain fatty acid production, and it modulates your central nervous system. That's, you know, basically your brain, okay? So, pretty important. And the microbiome is here's another example. And, you know, some of these terms, you can start to get familiar with. If they seem a little strange at first, when you hear them a few times, they'll sink in.
Here's my favorite bug, Akkermansia, right? Akkermansia sitting there. And then remember, it's helping to regulate all these bugs, the healthy good organisms in different ways. Our health, ain't helping to regulate these immune cells over here that have these fancy names, IL-1, IL-6, tumor, you know, they, there's a long list of these things down here. But again, it's the same basic schematic that we're thinking about. Is the gut bacteria are regulating immune function, and the immune system is regulating the gut bacteria. Oh, and here's the other one that we just saw, Lactobacillus, remember that was on the test? And so, Lactobacillus is low, you can take a Lactobacillus-containing probiotic, etc. Oh, and that's actually showing that good, a healthy versus unhealthy gut lining. Well, that's kind of interesting too, but that's not what we're really talking about. But yeah, skip, skip that. See, I've got, let me see if I got throwing my slides here. Get that one. And then we'll go back to the lab test once I cover all these. Yeah, I think we got them all covered. Yeah, okay, good.
So, let's go back to the lab. Then you have a little background now. I can kind of see where we're heading with all this, right? And so, when you, so, okay, so, so, Ralph, about a couple of things, you can do this in different ways. You can use lifestyle, diet, even exercise, even being out in the sun helps the commensal bacteria grow. You can use food as the most obvious and kind of impactful way of doing it. You can use supplements that you just kind of guess about, like I said, prebiotics are generically good if you're not getting enough from your food and a fiber from your food. You can use probiotics, just be a little careful. Don't take too much of one product probiotic for too long. Like, like that Lactobacillus marker on this particular patient, sometimes we'll get these labs back and we'll see really high Lactobacillus. Let me show you that again. There it is. So, if you take a Lactobacillus-containing probiotic for years, this number can go way up, and that's not necessarily a great thing. If you take a Bifidobacterium probiotic for years, this number can go too high. So, if you have a favorite probiotic, you know, don't stay on it forever. You know, a few months, maybe six months, but, you know, mix things up. You want variety and diversity in the microbiome. So, you don't want to just stick with one single product forever, okay? You don't be a little careful about that.
Anyways, this test, 24 of these commensal or normal bacteria. So, you can start to get a sense of what's happening with the microbiome and how is that relating to the person's immune system. And we don't have time to get into each bug, but you get the general idea, right? It's complicated. There's a lot of these organisms, and we're trying to make sense of it and get a person healthy by analyzing the actual microbiome itself.
So, again, if you want to do it strictly with lifestyle, you're thinking about a couple classifications. One is fiber-containing foods, like beans, or prebiotic-containing foods, like asparagus. And again, Google the list of prebiotic-containing foods. You know, Jerusalem artichoke, there's a bunch, right? Those provide the fiber that allow these bacteria to grow. And there's another classification, then foods that are called polyphenols. So, polyphenols are large molecular structures. Classic polyphenol-containing thing would be like green tea, resveratrol is a polyphenol, you've probably heard of. There are any blueberries, right, have polyphenols in them. So, polyphenols are large molecular structures, and they cannot get across the intestinal tract lining. Most of them can't, so we can't absorb them. So, when you eat your blueberries or drink your green tea, your polyphenols from there, these really powerful antioxidants that you're consuming that, you know, we're good for you, they're actually the food supply for your intestinal bacteria, believe it or not. Crazy, is that? So, again, one of the reasons why eating blueberries is so good for you is because the polyphenols allow these good bacteria to grow out. And the same thing with foods like beans and grains and, you know, foods that have a lot of fiber in them, vegetables, obviously, you're gonna have the. So, even something like an apple would be good, right? You're gonna have the fiber and and the polyphenols that stimulate the growth of the good bacteria.
And in response to especially in response to fiber, what grows out in your body or what's produced in the body are these short-chain fatty acids, okay? And they have these fancy names, butyrate, acetate, propionate. Most important one is butyrate. So, what happens when you eat beans or greens, you have fiber in your diet? Is the good bacteria are happy because that's their food. So, they grow and they grow. They dump out stuff that they don't need, you know? So, they have their own little metabolic processes. They're digesting this fiber. And believe it or not, they like the fiber. For them, that's like a food supply. For us, not so much, right? It's just passes through our gut. But the bacteria like, yay, finally, we got something to eat. Dan needs some beans today. They chew up that fiber and what they spit out as a waste product are these short-chain fatty acids. And these short-chain fatty acids are massive, massively powerful immune modulators. Like, you want to read about that? We don't know. It's just like a whole another hour I could talk about this, but just butyrate alone, massively, massively powerful. I've got all kinds of studies on this. I didn't really prepare these, but butyrate alone has a huge impact on modulating your, not just your gut bacteria, but your immune response, okay?
So, if you want to Google something later and you have a few, three minutes, I'd check out butyrate. I don't know, you just type in like, butyrate and immune function or something like that, and you'll see what I mean. So, again, by eating fiber or taking fiber supplements, you get these short-chain fatty acids. And then the body starts to release butyrate. They also make butyrate in the supplement form. If you really need to do something dramatic, impact the gut immunity, you can intake butyrate in a supplement form. Most of the forms of butyrate that are out there on the market are not very well absorbed. They're only absorbed maybe 5 or 10%. And there's some newer forms of butyrate in a liquid that came out in the late 2019 that are very well absorbed. So, if you do a lab and you have low butyrate and you have immune problems, not just immune problems in the gut, but immune problems anywhere in the body, then, you know, you want to for sure get on some butyrate for a little while, and then I'll fix that up pretty quick along with your diet, right?
So, again, we're talking about gut immunity. 60% of the immune system is in your gut. If the microbiome is not doing well, and you don't have enough, for example, short-chain fatty acids, and you don't have enough butyrate, then you're going to get in serious trouble in terms of your gut immunity. And because that's a major sort of inflection point, right, for all these other immune factors, you're gonna have some serious problems with your overall immune response.
Here's another little blurb, um, for you to rate. The stuff is really interesting too. Before we don't have time for this, but anyways, look it up. Look up butyrate and immune function. That'll make you want to go out and eat something with fiber in it, okay? For sure, for sure. Remember, how does that work? The good gut bacteria use the fiber for food, and they spit out as a waste product, butyrate, acetate, and propionate. And if on a lab test, you see that your butyrate levels are low, okay, and it means you need butyrate. And the main solution is going to be with food, but you can also take butyrate in a supplement form. And again, butyrate has a very significant immune modulating effect, which is, I spent a couple months reading about it a little while ago. It's pretty phenomenal what it actually does.
See, I think I have some here. We go. Well, this is kind of sciency. Anyways, it's kind of sciency. Let me get into it, but you should see this stuff so you actually know a little bit. Let me just show you. I actually find to find interesting. Short-chain fatty acids also help protect epithelial cells by modulating oxidative stress and immune mediators. Immune mediators include prostaglandins and cytokines. And here are the fancy names, including TNF-alpha, IL-6, IL-10, right? And then transcription factor NF-kappa-beta. And so, you know, this is like a fancy, complicated, science-y way of saying that butyrate is super-duper important times 10 for your immune function. Remember, look at this. Short-chain fatty acids like butyrate, it's the main one, it's modulating immune function, including these are like the who's who of the immune system. Prostaglandins, cytokines, these are huge factors in immune regulation. And then IL-6, IL-10, right? All these are when you look at these diagrams and you see about what is my immune system made up of, this is it, okay? And that's modulated and mediated by short-chain fatty acids. There's not like a random kind of thing. This is like how your body actually works, right? It's like fundamental physiology of the system.
So, when you're looking at a low butyrate, you're looking at an immune system that has no guidance, right? You're looking at an immune system that has no mechanisms to control it properly. And if that's happening in your gut, it sets you up for a very weak response in other parts of the body. Not that I'm totally obsessed with watching TV shows about history and battles and stuff, but like, if you look at, um, I don't know, like the Romans and how they fought the Gauls, oh, those years, right, for like, uh, I think for a couple hundred years, these two people, these two groups of people were fighting each other, alright? That's crazy. These kept fighting and fighting. Eventually, obviously, the Romans kind of went away and they fell apart. But for a long time, I don't know, hundreds of years, Romans were just constantly destroying everybody. And, you know, one of the things when you, when you think about battles is that if you have, let's say, the Romans are fighting the Gauls and they're lined up against each other, and, you know, somewhere in France, whatever. And if there is a really weak point in the Gauls' line, defensive line, right? Then the Romans are so set in their cavalry, crush them, and they'll come around from behind, destroy 'em, right? So, the human body is set up exactly the same. If your gut immunity is weak, your mucosal immunity is weak, the whole system is down, right? And then you get exposed to a virus or a bacteria or parasite, wherever that is happening in other parts of the body, it could be a lung infection, it could be a sinus infection, it could be a vaginal yeast infection. The mucosal tissues are going to be weak. And if that central control point in the gut, in terms of, is weak, and the gut immunity is weak, you're going to be really susceptible to picking up infections in other parts of the body. And that is like a foundational principle of naturopathic medicine and functional medicine.
Okay, let me just show you some other features of the lab here, so you can see how cool this stuff is. So, again, the results are looking for the gut microbiome. Is it in balance or not? And we'll just look at the microbiome factors on here, okay? Because there's a lot of other stuff, then we're not talking about. Oh, here, how cool is that? Look, see, immune suppression, inflammation, right? They're trying to show you how your gut function is really tied to immune function, just with that. And then this is commensal abundance. These are the good bacteria. You rate yourself as to where you are with the whole summary of those good bacteria. And then they show you these other markers here, like the one I think especially is important for what we're talking about today, is butyrate, and how butyrate helps regulate immune function. Remember, butyrate is controlling those immune cells, just like Akkermansia is regulating immune cells. It's a very, very key component of your immune system. And these are the, again, these are not peripheral parts of the immune system. These are like the immune system for real, okay? That's regulated by these cells. And that's why there's so much interest in the microbiome right now in terms of research, because people are trying to figure out how important the gut is. And then, remember, you can also test individual organisms, like Akkermansia. There's a bunch of other ones on here that are cool, but that one's for sure my favorite. And, you know, so it's named for what it does, muciniphila. So, it's philia, I love like Philadelphia is the city of love, like philia is like love. And mucin, it's a lover of mucin. So, Akkermansia shows out there in your gut lining, and it's chomping along outside the gut lining, and it chews up the mucin or mucus in the gut lining. That's what it uses for food. That's kind of crazy, right? But it's like, it's like having the best gardener in the world that's maintaining a yard, right? It's maintaining the health and function of your gut lining. And all you need to do is feed it with prebiotic-containing foods, fiber-containing foods, polyphenol-containing foods, that's your blueberries, right? And your green teas and your spices and all the things that have polyphenols. And then the fiber-containing foods, we should all know, the best kind of fiber is beans. The best beans are usually lentils, but you can have any kind of bean that you want. And then prebiotic, probiotic-containing foods, right? Like your, your fermented foods, basically. That's how you maintain all this.
And remember, the big take-home thought here before I wrap up is that every bite of food that you consume is either going to be pro-inflammatory or anti-inflammatory. It's either going to stimulate and improve your immune function or reduce it. And so, the bottom line is, you can't be healthy unless you're eating well. If you're, you know, stuck and you're eating well, you're just frustrated and you're not getting healthy, check out Kalish Wellness. You can start here, click on this button that says "Start Here," you can talk to our health coach and see if it's an appropriate fit for you to start to do some of these labs, like the GI Effects, and kind of tie it back to that. And then I'll wrap up in a minute.
Okay, last class, I talked about, last session, I talked about secretory IgA and how stress mediates cortisol and how that's related to immunity. So, now I want to just kind of go full circle. And I'll show you here, I have a diagram on this, I use for students in my classes here. So, the adrenal hormones, we talked about here, and that's a better one. When we're stressed, death, divorce, childbirth, overwork, all these things happen, we're stressed, our secretory IgA gets screwed up, weakens our immune response, then the GI problems start to develop that we're talking about today. So, stress is usually the initial. The microbiome starts to collapse, and then we can build up a high level of toxins. So, when we're doing the lab testing in my practice, we test and correct the stress response, we test and correct the microbiome, and then we look at detox pathways. Again, we do that all through labs.
I'm going to talk about the most complicated and amazing lab in the upcoming session. It's called an Ion panel, and we're going to look at all the nutrients that relate to immune function. So, we'll analyze each nutrient that's important for immune function, and I'll show you what it does and how it relates to the lab, okay? And if you're interested in becoming a patient, go to Kalish Wellness and click on the "Start Here" button. And I'm going to wrap it up for now. There's a couple questions that came in, and so let me answer these.
Is it true most probiotic do not survive in the stomach and cannot make it to the intestine? Yeah, it's true. It's not like you swallow the probiotic and then those exact bacteria end up growing in your large intestine miles away, because what they have to go through this pit of destruction called your stomach, right? So, all this stomach acid, they're gonna get chewed up. Then they hit your small intestine, and your gallbladder is gonna crank out a ton of bile, and the bile is massively destructive to microorganisms like bacteria, right? So, there's like two hits already. And then you're going through the intestinal tract, and there's all kinds of bacteria growing there, right? So, it's not like you take a probiotic and then it magically appears in your digestive tract. However, we do see, like I just showed you, if you take Lactobacillus for a while, you'll see patients on labs that have really high Lactobacillus. So, there's some of it getting in. And I think what they think now is that there's some of the organisms get in, and you take them for long enough, you can see that on the lab. So, we know they're getting in because you see these super high Lactobacillus levels and the person's taking Lactobacillus. So, there is some effect that's direct, but it's moderate. I think the main effect of the probiotics is that they're modulating and impacting the gut. Maybe they're impacting the gut pH levels, acid-alkaline balance. Maybe there are, you know, modulating other organisms. I don't think anyone really understands why probiotic pills or capsules work so well, but they do work for a lot of people, okay? But not as well as diet.
Our whole grains full of butyrate? Was the best source of fiber? Yeah, so butyrate is made. Well, let's let's think about. So, you eat a grain or vegetable or beans or something that has a good quality of fiber in it, and that fiber hits your intestinal tract, right? And then the bacteria chew up the fiber. And as they're breaking down the fiber, they dump out and excrete these short-chain fatty acids. So, they don't want the fat, they just dump it out. They can't metabolize it or use it. It's their waste product, okay? And that butyrate then is the one that really helps modulate and control your immune system. So, absolutely. Now, some people are, some people can't handle grains. I mean, some people get sick if they eat any grains. So, don't eat grains if that happens. You know, some people get sick if they eat gluten. So, clear, don't eat gluten. But most people can handle non-gluten grains, and some people can even handle gluten, just depending on how healthy you are and what kind of gluten you're talking about, where you live, you know? So, you can absolutely do this with grains, but not everybody handles grains. You have to be a little bit careful.
What does it mean if you have very high acetate levels and low butyrate? That means that you need to basically take butyrate, and that should balance it out, okay? There's a supplement. Oh, and the lab that does this is called Genova, and set GI Effects. Is there a discount? The whole family wants to sign up? Yeah, usually I'll work out something. So, I work with a lot of families, and usually we, well, there's a contact the office, Magdalena, if you want to sign up, and we'll work out something in terms of, you know, it's not really a volume discount, but more like I can work with the whole family at the same time. So, it's not the same amount of money as if you signed up each person individually, okay?
All right, you guys, I hope you stay safe out there. I'm gonna wrap up for now. We're going to come back and do this again next week, and I'm going to talk about nutrients that are essential for immune function, how you can get them in your diet and from food and stuff, and then how you can test for them, okay? Stay safe out there, folks. We'll talk again soon. Thanks.