Today, I am thrilled to connect with Josh Dech. Josh is a former paramedic and holistic nutritionist specializing in Crohn's, Colitis, and other gut-related disorders. He has collaborated with some of the most renowned doctors worldwide, and he serves as a medical lecturer at the Priority Health Academy, where he educates doctors on the holistic approach to gut health and inflammatory bowel disease.
In today's conversation, we explore the alarming statistic that 50% of all gut diseases occur in the United States, and the 105 million ambulatory care visits, 14 million hospital admissions, 236,000 deaths, and the 142 billion dollars these conditions cost annually. We dive into the impact of chronic stress, toxins, nutrient deficiencies, and life stages on gut health, and we look at the significance of the vagal nerve, the microbiome, and how it impacts mental health. We also cover dysbiosis, stool and organic acid testing, nutritional choices, and supplements.
This riveting conversation with Josh Dech contains many valuable insights, and I know you will love and appreciate it.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
Why are gut diseases much more prevalent in the United States than in other countries?
The truth about glyphosate
How poisonous nerve agent-class chemicals get used in producing our food
How stress affects the body on a molecular level
The disruptive impact non-nutritive sweeteners have on the gut microbiome
Why fiber is essential for the gut microbiome
The impact of modern diets on gut health
How nutrient deficiencies contribute to poor gut health
The importance of the vagus nerve for gut health
What dysbiosis is, and how to address it
Why we need to avoid processed foods and focus instead on natural nutrient sources
Bio
Josh is an ex-paramedic and Holistic Nutritionist specializing in Crohn’s and Colitis, as well as other related gut issues. After reversing over 250 cases of Crohn’s and Colitis (previously thought to be impossible to fix), he has been connected to some of the world’s most renowned doctors. He has since been recruited to the Priority Health Academy as a medical lecturer, helping educate doctors on the holistic approach to gut health and inflammatory bowel disease, and has launched a top 5% globally ranked podcast.
“In the USA, we have chemicals and toxins with warning labels that are known to cause cancers, DNA damage, or genetic mutations, put into our food that are illegal in many other places.”
-Josh Dech
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Submit your questions to support@cynthiathurlow.com
Connect with Josh Dech
On his website
Transcript:
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:00:02] Welcome to Everyday Wellness podcast. I'm your host, Nurse Practitioner Cynthia Thurlow. This podcast is designed to educate, empower and inspire you to achieve your health and wellness goals. My goal and intent is to provide you with the best content and conversations from leaders in the health and wellness industry each week and impact over a million lives.
[music]
[00:00:29] Today, I had the honor of connecting with Josh Dech. He's an ex-paramedic and holistic nutritionist who specializes in Crohn's and colitis and other gut related issues. He's had the opportunity to work with some of the world's most renowned doctors and has been recruited to the Priority Health Academy as a medical lecturer, helping educate doctors on the holistic approach to gut health and inflammatory bowel disease.
[00:00:52] Today, we spoke at length about why 50% of gut diseases are found in the United States, spoke at length about specific statistics around here, including the fact that gastrointestinal, liver and pancreatic diseases account for 105 million ambulatory care visits per year, 14 million hospital admissions, 236,000 deaths and 142 billion in total costs.
[00:01:16] We discuss the impact of chronic stress toxins, nutrient deficiencies and its impact on our gut health as well as life stages, the role of the microbiome, the impact of the health of our microbiome on mental health, the importance of the vagal nerve, what constitutes a healthy gut microbiome, why dysbiosis is so significant, the role of both stool testing and organic acid testing, the impact of nutritional choices and the role of supplements. I know you will enjoy this conversation as much as I did recording it.
[00:01:54] Well, Josh, such a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Welcome to Everyday Wellness.
Josh Dech: [00:01:58] Cynthia, thank you so much for having me. It's always a delight when we have a chance to connect.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:02:02] Absolutely. Why is it that 50% of gut diseases are found in the United States? What is going on, or how are we attributing our lifestyles to creating a certain degree of disease discomfort that we take as a new normal?
Josh Dech: [00:02:21] It’s actually a really staggering stat, looking specifically to things like Crohn’s colitis, where you have about seven or eight million cases worldwide. 50% like you say are in the USA or North America as a collective whole, which is less than 5% of the global population. So, when 5% has 50% of the world’s cases, this is epidemic level stuff that nobody is really talking about.
[00:02:44] And so, we have to consider there is a lot of different factors, and I get verbally assaulted, we'll say [laughs] on the internet, for having varying opinions about why this is, because in the Crohn's colitis space, for example, we're dealing with an autoimmune disease. What's considered and told to be lifelong, people are on medications for life because of it. When you come up with something different and say, “Wait a minute, this can be fixed.”
[00:03:07] We're proving it. We've got colonoscopy reports, and CT scans and all kinds of stuff to follow up, people don't want to hear it. We say, “Look, what's happened in the last 75 years.” Ultimately, we have this contract with our microbiomes in our gut. I give you a place to live that is full, and healthy, and abundant and robust. I will give you nutrients. I will stay not super stressed all the time. I'll give you all the things you need to live in this amazing little ecosystem. And in return, you provide me with vitamins, and nutrients, and detoxification, hormone balancing neurotransmitters, my immune system. You give this back to me. It's symbiotic.
[00:03:42] In the last 75 to 100 years, we've broken that contract. We broke this agreement. And so, we end up now having this dysbiotic state. But more so in the USA. Look at considering pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, any kind of cide. So, the USA has about 20,000 different pesticides approved for use, whereas the UK has like 2,000. And so, we have a massive amount more of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides. We have chemicals and toxins put into our food that are illegal in many other places that have warning labels that are well-known to cause cancers, DNA damage or genetic mutations that are well known to cause these problems, but they're approved for use here.
[00:04:23] But when you work or you have an industry of healthcare, which is about $4.5 trillion, $5 trillion dollars in valuation, it's got to come from somewhere. If you create the market-- I'm going to put a little PC on this one. I'm not saying it's a big conspiracy, but really. The FDA and the pharma companies, everybody's working together. You get a CEO who moves from one to another to another, and they're approving all the stuff that make us sick and then we're sold a cure. It's a really, really toxic environment.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:04:51] No, it really is. You've done such a beautiful job of identifying some of the contributory factors. Just for listeners, there are some statistics that I want to share that I think are really sobering. So, digestive diseases. That's a big umbrella term, account for over 100 million ambulatory care visits annually. So, that means outpatient visits.
[00:05:13] According to a particular study done by the NIH called the PROMIS large population study, it had over 70,000 participants. Nearly two-thirds of surveyed Americans are burdened by GI symptoms, things as benign as bloating, gas, flatulence, constipation, diarrhea. We use the term, dyspepsia, feeling like you have a little bit of GI upset, trouble swallowing, which is dysphagia, nausea, vomiting. Most people do not seek care for these symptoms, because we assume it is just so normal.
[00:05:46] I know this both as a nurse practitioner, and just in talking to adults just on a regular basis, it's always like the party conversation. People will ask me what I do. Here's a little bit of a hint into my life. If I don't really want to talk about what I do, I say, “I'm a Nurse Practitioner,” because people know what that is. If you say entrepreneur, that opens up a whole pandora box of things to discuss.
[00:06:07] To your point, our modern-day lifestyles are contributing to why we are seeing so much disease. So, let's talk a little bit about-- You alluded to the toxins piece. I would argue the standard American diet is a huge contributor to this. But some specific examples for listeners about pesticides or herbicides, maybe names they've heard in either in the medical vernacular, or they've heard on social media, or maybe they're watching traditional news programs or reading a newspaper, things that might come up for them that may clue them in that these are contributing to why we are dealing with so much digestive issues.
Josh Dech: [00:06:44] I can simply wrap it up and say any chemical that was not here when Earth started, whether you believe we are created or came from a big bang, it doesn't matter, we all came from the same place. The things we have now into our system came from a different place. It's really as simple as that. But let's talk about glyphosate.
[00:07:01] Glyphosate is a hot ticket item right now. It's been talked about all over the place and hush-hushed. But Bayer, who bought this from Monsanto, just recently paid out $11 billion to settle over 100,000 in cancer lawsuits. You don't pay out a settlement unless you're going to lose. You're trying to hush-hush this thing. They paid $11 billion to settle 100,000 lawsuits. There's still 30 to 40,000 more still pending, and they're still allowed to use the product.
[00:07:28] Anything else in the market that's known to be this toxic is immediately removed. Any vaccine that's caused, what, more than 10 or 15 deaths, immediately removed. Once we start looking at this intricate system that we seem to live in, the more and more we see these things. But look at the types of chemicals we're spraying.
[00:07:44] Glyphosate's a big one. It's an herbicide. Most popular worldwide. Billions of pounds used every single year, and tons of deaths and gut dysfunction. These chemicals, they disrupt your gut microbiome. We consider that we are a direct reflection of nature in its own way. Looking at your gut, its ecosystem, there is a correlation between our health in the abundance or diversity of life within our own gut’s ecosystem.
[00:08:09] Look at the rainforest. The more diverse it is, the healthier it is versus a freshly plowed field full of dirt. There’s no diversity. It looks dead in and empty. This happens inside of our body. Well, these pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, these killers kill life on earth. They also kill it inside of us.
[00:08:27] Look at the types of agents are using. There was one recently approved for use just this year, early 2024, they just brought back in called chlorpyrifos. This was actually started for use back in, I think, the 1950s, and it was banned and made illegal back in the 1970s and recently brought back. This is of the class called organophosphates. Now, here I throw a fun fact at you. Did you know that organophosphates back in the 1930s were being used by Nazi scientists as a product for chemical warfare? It's a nerve agent.
[00:08:56] So, if you look back at sarin gas, you guys might know this hot button word, this has been used in, what was it, the 1980s Tokyo subway attacks, the Aum Shinrikyo cult. It was used in the Syrian war. It's been used all over the place and banned by The Chemical Weapons Convention, saying, “We should not use this.” These nerve agents cause hyper spasms, flooding of the lungs. Your muscles will spasm so severe they break your own bones. This chlorpyrifos, as well as 700 or 800 other organophosphates of the nerve agent class are being used on our food. They go, “Well, the poison makes the dose.” Your average strawberry in the USA has 12 to 14 different types of chemicals on it. So, tell me, what's the dose? What are we consuming?
[00:09:36] You can't possibly tell me that you've tested all 20,000 herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, rodenticides or whatever else against every aspect of the human body and composition, against the other hundred thousand chemicals in our life supply between chemicals and food, clothing, personal care products. We have no idea. It's impossible to know how they're interacting. But then we say, “Well, don't worry about it. You're just being a hippie. Well, I'm healthy and you're not, and I avoid them and you don't.”
[00:10:02] So, let's take a look at the correlation and see where this is going. But we really do live in a highly toxic world, directly reflecting the environment around us. One more sidebar, Cynthia. Remember when were kids, you go outside after it rained, worms all over the sidewalk? When was the last time you saw a worm on the sidewalk?
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:10:19] I don’t know.
Josh Dech: [00:10:19] I haven’t, since the 1990s.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:10:21] It’s been a while. It’s interesting, because we have three dogs and we walk them every morning. I’m now in a different part of my state in Virginia. So, I’m in central Virginia, where there is lower population, there is more open space. When my boys were young, we would talk about the warm suicide. You’d have a lot of rain, the worm would get pushed up, and my kids would literally pick them up and put them back into the grass to try to save the worms. But we definitely don't see anything like we did when we were growing up, for sure.
[00:10:50] What are your thoughts on nonnutritive sweeteners? Now, I know these can be very controversial. I have some guests that I'll bring on the podcast. They'll say, “I'm not really concerned about sucralose, NutraSweet, etc.” I have others that say, “If we're really looking at the research, I think over time they can damage our insulin sensitivity. They can contribute to significant changes in the gut microbiome.” What are your thoughts on the nonnutritive sweeteners which are so popular, because we are a society that loves sweet things?
Josh Dech: [00:11:20] We are a society conditioned to learn to love sweet things. There are a lot of other cultures and societies who value bitters more, but bitters are associated with better digestion. We're given sweet things. When you actually eat the standard American diet with the high fructose corn syrups and the high digestion or high glycemic index spiking carbohydrates, we find ourselves actually craving sweets more often. We don't feel satiated. We want more. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where we want more, we get more, which makes us want more, so, we get more. This explains why the USA is the most obese country in the world. What's it? 70% are considered overweight. 40% are clinically obese. I think it's 20% to 30% or even 40% who are prediabetic, plus whatever percent are known diabetes. We go, “Oh, it's just normal.”
[00:12:04] Again, normal doesn't dictate optimal. We are all so horrifically ill, and so we replace with these nonnutritive sweeteners. Look at saccharin, like your sweet and lows. These are well known to disrupt the gut microbiome. Now, there are some like xylitol, where they say, “Well, it can have a therapeutic benefit for things like biofilms, but there are a lot of things that have therapeutic benefits in small doses. But if we're consuming them in large doses all the time as our primary combined with other nonnutritive sweeteners, there's so many out there. Your sucralose, your xylitol, erythritol, all these tols, these ol sugar alcohols.
[00:12:40] I guess I'm going to back this up a little bit, Cynthia. You can find a study to support anything. You can find a study to say, this is not that big of a deal, and one to say it's the worst. We have conflicting evidence, believe it or not, about aspartame being a well- known neurotoxin. So, this is causing known neurotoxic effects. We've seen cases of people developing what looks to be symptomatically like MS, multiple sclerosis, who come off the aspartame when it gets better. Depending on your sensitivity levels, it might affect you more than another. But ultimately, all these things, be it a nonnutritive sweetener, be it food coloring and dyes, a chemical, none of these existed 100 years ago.
[00:13:17] And so, my thought is this. If I'm having parties every week and I keep bringing people over to the house, and one day, I invite somebody who's new, never been in the group before, and stuff starts going missing from my home, how many times are going to invite this guy in before I assume he's the one stealing things? Do I need to catch him on video? Improve it? We do this with our food and our health go, “Look at the correlative data.” We can see direct correlation between the induction of seed oils or nonnutritive sweeteners. We go, “Look, it's a 70% chance this is causing.” I go, “Wow.” Until you can prove it's going to be just fine. Innocent till proven guilty is great for crimes are really bad for artificial foods and sweeteners. That's my answer for all of these toxic ingredients, or potentially toxic.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:14:00] Well, and I think you bring up such a good point that many people will say correlation is not causation. However, as you mentioned, the analogy about a new friend inviting them over, and then all of a sudden, you're missing things, and do you have to wait until you catch them literally red handed to understand the individual that is probably pilfering from you.
[00:14:20] I'd love to pivot a little bit and talk about other contributors to poor gut health, things that I think are very relevant for everyone that's listening. Chronic stress, the pandemic, thankfully is four years behind us, but the net impact of chronic stress, high cortisol on the gut microbiome and things like dysbiosis, impaired gastric acid secretion. Let's talk about how chronic stress can be very disruptive to the gut microbiome, as well as the normal anatomy and physiology in the gut.
Josh Dech: [00:14:54] That is such a huge can of worms to open. I'm very excited to get into it.
[laughter]
[00:14:59] So, let's talk about it. Stress affects us in a ton of different ways. It’s going to affect us chemically, like you mentioned cortisol. So, even hormonally, it’s going to affect the acid and enzyme productions, your vitamin and mineral balances. It’s going to affect your microbiome, your immune system, your motility. Theres a lot of different feedback loops here. Stress isn’t a one thing where I’m psychologically stressed, I’m mentally, emotionally stressed, there’s also something we go a bit deeper called the cell danger response, where we have these very molecular level types of chemical responses that your body interprets as stress, which elicits a small-scale stress level across 40 trillion cells. And now, suddenly, we have these similar responses. So, it goes quite deep.
[00:15:42] Let's talk about this a little bit. Stress, for example, there are chemical stressors and chemical signals that do alter your gut microbiome. You can take somebody and test happy tears versus sad tears. They have a different chemical composition. Everything in our body reacts and acts accordingly on a molecular level. So, we can see chemical changes in the blood, we can see more stress hormones or stress chemicals, more toxicity, more inflammatory products that are produced.
[00:16:08] Now, the thing about stress, go back 10,000 years. We're living in mud huts and in caves. We are stressed a little bit. We get up, we eat. You run away from a bear, you get back to your cave, everyone's fine, stresses up, stresses down. Today, we are chronically stressed about everything. Money, and food, and social media, and politics and whatever it is. It's a constant bombardment of stressors, right down to self-worth and the food we're eating. Even the conversation we're having now, someone's going, “Damn, I eat that strawberry that's got 14 chemicals. Now I'm stressed.” There is so many things that add stressors to this. And so, we start to elevate our cortisol.
[00:16:45] Cortisol is a good hormone. It actually has anti-inflammatory effects. It can help with wound healing. It wakes you up in the morning. But too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing. Cortisol, in these high levels, with these stress responses, starts to break down your gut lining. So, now it's like wearing a pair of shoes without socks. You get a lot of mechanical wear and tear on that heel till it gets red and blisters and bleeds. We see that with cortisol and high stress responses in the gut.
[00:17:10] Now, we're eating foods and we're taking in things and having stress responses that wears down, you get a lot of physical and chemical stress to the tissues in the gut lining. If you're high stress, there's rest and digest, there's also fight and flight. If you are in fight and flight, you are not resting and digesting. It's very much an on-off switch with a volume knob attached. If you are high stress, chronic stress, in the middle of being shot at, you're not going to digest anything. You might be literally shitting your pants, because it's quite the opposite. It's a dumping. And so, we don't produce enough digestive enzymes or stomach acid. But if we bring back down to rest and digest, we can now properly break down, digest, absorb and assimilate these nutrients. But when you're stressed, what else do you need?
[00:17:52] Let's use another analogy. If you live on an acreage and you live on well water, you have enough water in that well to bathe, to wash your dishes, to clean things, whatever you got to do, laundry, etc. It's enough water. It refills every day. You deplete it and you refill it. We think about your body and its nutrient profiles as being very similar. You have enough to operate your day to day. But the second your house is on fire, you need extra water. When you are high stressed or highly inflamed or very, very sick, your body is burning through extra resources at an increased rate. And now, suddenly, your well is empty and we can start to pull it from other places.
[00:18:26] People are high stress with gut issues for a number of reasons, common to have issues with hair, skin and nails, common to have issues with fatigue, energy levels, hormones, sex hormones, because your body is pulling resources like bank accounts from other places. It will literally pull nutrients from your bones and your teeth, taking minerals away. High stress people, gut issues. You got oral issues and tooth sensitivity? Yes, it is a microbiome issue, but it can be a nutrient partitioning issue. We look at what it does to your gut microbiome. You now have this overgrowth of, what we call, opportunistic microbes. It will drop your immune system as high level of stress allowing bad guys to come in, because your shields are down.
[00:19:03] Now we have fungus, and parasites, and E. coli and all kinds of nasty bacteria which we see at the root cause of things like inflammatory bowel diseases. And so, it’s this huge spectrum of things that stress does, and nobody's going to be stress free, but this opens that door for management.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:19:19] Yeah. It's so interesting, because we talk about the role of hormesis, beneficial stress in the right amount at the right time. That's not what we're speaking to. We're talking about chronic, unrelenting stress. I think that for every listener, we have had periods in our lives either when a loved one's been sick, or someone's passed away, or we've lost a job, or we've gone through a bad breakup or life just is not working out to in the most advantageous way. And so, helping everyone understand that this is one of many things that can contribute to poor gut health overall.
[00:19:54] On your podcast, on your website, you talk a lot about nutrient deficiencies. You were alluding to this in this previous conversation. Let's talk about what are your thoughts on low fiber diets, low polyphenol diets. If you hear from just about any gut health expert, everyone seems to be in buckets. Some people that are pro-fiber, people that are anti-fiber people that are pro-polyphenols, people that are anti-polyphenols. What are your thoughts around nutrient deficiencies, how these contribute to poor gut health and some of these other sidebar conversations? I do know for you personally, after prepping for this podcast, that you were all about starting with food first, as opposed to the latest, hottest supplement. But for those listening that are curious, what nutrients, per se, are you referring to?
Josh Dech: [00:20:44] Yeah. I'd like to preface that as well. There's a lot of people, and again, what I specialize being severe IBS but primarily Crohn's colitis, they've had the diet conversations. Diet's an important part. I think what doctors do is say, “Well, food can't cause the disease,” which I also believe is false. Therefore, food can't cure the disease. Therefore, food doesn't matter. They take it one step too far. So, we do have to have the food conversation, because when your cup overflows, now you have disease processes. Your cup is already damn near full. Its right brimming full. The picture when you fill a glass of water, you have that little bubble on top. Food is those last few drops. That is what is causing you to overflow, but you’re already full. So, you have to look at other factors. And so, we were dealing with nutrition.
[00:21:25] I don’t know how you can be anti-polyphenol, so to speak. [Cynthia laughs] Again, there is so many benefits to it in such a high stress world. But let's take it back a minute here to the nutrition side. If we can split this into two dichotomies, let's say, very high fiber versus carnivore. I've done both, experienced both, experimented with both, had clients on both, I've seen a lot. I don't inherently believe that fruits, and vegetables and fiber is bad for you by any means. We have an abundance of science to show that fiber is good. I think it's really today what we do with our fruits and vegetables in North American or Westernized cultures-- The things we put on them, the GMOs and a lot of them have been bred for excess growth that haven't actually existed. Again, hundreds of years ago, before this big boom in agriculture and population, even take it back 5,000 years ago before the agricultural revolution.
[00:22:17] And so, there's a lot of questions around whether these things are good or bad for us. But ultimately, how are you feeling? Because you're the only one who's going to know. But if we take it back-- Let's look at some data going into 20-- I want to say it was 2019. There was a report done in what's called cell reports. They took some data from-- I talk about the study all the time. It's so amazing. They took some GI samples and GI-maps. So, you're measuring microbiomes from Nigerian countries and cultures versus Westernized. They took rural and urban, so they took large cities and communities who are the midway point. So, we'll extrapolate this further.
[00:22:50] You have a rural Nigerian farmer growing up on the land. They were born vaginally, breastfed. They're living on the land. They're eating the fruits and vegetables. They have a farm. They're outside all the time. They have the greatest diversity. They even have substantially more microbes in their gut that actually will assimilate, digest and ferment fibers to creating all these beneficial nutrients. Comparing that to the gut microbiome data of North Americans in this study, they actually had substantially less microbes in their gut that would break down and digest fibers. And so, North Americans, we want to produce things like short chain fatty acids. They’re great for all kinds of things for your body. In Nigeria, they have the microbes that will ferment fibers to produce then the short chain fatty acids.
[00:23:33] Over here, we have more microbes that will produce them on their own without the fermentation of fibers, because we seem to lack a lot of those microbes that ferment fibers. Now, is that the pesticides? Is that a cultural thing? Who knows? But we can see there's a difference. So, it comes down to food, and nutrients and fiber. I think it's all going to be very individualized to the, “Who are you? Where did you grow up? Where did you come from? Were your parents sick?” We can see generational microbiomes being passed down. We can see this in study.
[00:24:02] And so, if your great grandmother has 1,000 microbes in her gut, and she has your mother, Cynthia, who now has 800 microbes in her gut, who then has you, who has 600, who then has a daughter who has 400, this is an inheritance of dysbiosis as we introduce more chemicals and toxins into the world. And so, this biotic state can explain why we've seen things like bowel disease when up to 72% depends on the studies, 60% to 72% of all Americans complain, like you mentioned, of a gut issue, gas, bloat, pain, constipation, diarrhea, acid reflux, cramping, whatever it is, at least once a week. Whereas we now go back in 1990, we had about two million cases of inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn's colitis, globally today, upwards of seven to eight million. So, we've gone four times, arguably up to five times as many cases of inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn's colitis in the last 35 years. So, it's this exponential growth. So, what are we doing to our food that's causing these diseases?
[00:25:03] Then we can take it a step further. Look at the 72% of people who have some kind of issue in their gut. One could argue, this is irritable bowel syndrome. It looks like even a low-grade irritable bowel, not 15 bowel movements a day or one every two weeks, but it's on the spectrum of severity. We know that up to 17% of all people diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease, really severe Crohn's colitis, have a previous diagnosis of IBS. But only about 15% or up to 20% of all North Americans have a diagnosis of IBS. This means if you got 72% who have IBS like symptoms, how many people do you know have gut issues and don't have a diagnosis? Most of them. So, we could argue that up to 70 plus percent actually have IBS. Therefore, up to 70% have IBS before they have IBD.
[00:25:53] And so, now we can actually say, is IBS and IBD, the same thing, where it's a progression of severity looking at our food in the data we just talked about? We can see where it's stemming from and how we're getting so much worse. If we can do that, we can then start to identify a root for these diseases, no longer calling them autoimmune, random, genetic or uncontrolled. We can reverse engineer and actually reverse the diseases. I went off on a tangent there, but I hope that answers your question and then some.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:26:20] No, no, it's so interesting, because I think for so many people, they don't understand that our genetics play a role in the composition of our gut microbiome before we're even born, whether or not you were a vaginal delivery versus a C-section. Let me be clear. I had two breech kids, both were born by C-sections. Whether you were formula fed or breastfed, just from the very beginning of our lives, we can set ourselves up and helping people understand that--
[00:26:50] When I went through my Nurse Practitioner training, we really thought about IBS and IBD as two very different things. The more I understand about IBS, the more I believe fervently that it is driven predominantly by underlying food sensitivities. And so, maybe it's really this process of, that's a more mild form of ultimately, we get to Crohn's colitis, which is a more severe manifestation and helping people understand all of the contributing factors is never just one thing. And so, I think that this is where bio individuality really plays an enormous role.
[00:27:24] I would think also in terms of looking at where we are life stage wise-- I don't know your age offhand, but I do know that as people are navigating 35, 40, 45 and older, they can suddenly start having shifts in sex hormones which can impact gut motility, which can impact immune response. I think about just the role of progesterone and women impacts gut motility, impacts gastric emptying. Many women will tell me, “I don't get hungry anymore,” and they're eating like a bird, and then they're intermittent fasting on top of it and they've whittled themselves down to one meal a day.
[00:28:01] Do you find when you're working directly with clients that you're starting to see some differentiation as people are getting older? When I say older, north of 35. So, if we think about middle aged 35, 40ish, do you start to see differentiators between younger patients and middle-aged older patients and their symptoms?
Josh Dech: [00:28:20] Thats a great question. I would say we used to. Now, I can’t speak from personal experience. I’m actually just turning 32 here in a couple of weeks.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:28:27] You’re a youngster.
Josh Dech: [00:28:29] Still a spring chicken. Yeah.
[laughter]
Josh Dech: [00:28:31] So, when I look at different patients across the board or clients, I guess in my case here, we have people as young as two and three years old coming in with bowel disease as old as in their 80s. And so, it’s quite a spectrum that we see across the age gap. What I really see more of a difference in is not so much symptoms, it’s really about the individuality and how their symptoms will manifest. But we see the big difference on is their ability to recover from these symptoms.
[00:28:56] And so, we take someone in. I’ll will use Larissa as an example. She just did an interview for us, information public. I can use her name. But she is lovely. She actually had severe ulcerative colitis. She was diagnosed back in 2013. It was so severe, she was on the brink of having her bowel removed. She described it very visually as having squirrels with razor blades attached to their feet running around on her insides. I’m talking 15 plus bowel movements, 25 a day, sometimes with blood and mucus doubling over in pain. She tried all the drugs, all the biologics and one of her root cause you mentioned things like food sensitivities. These can be something worth looking at, because they drop the defenses of your immune system.
[00:29:37] We do have to take it a step further and look at all the contributing factors going back to the glass analogy, what drops or big spills into your cup have filled it up? So, she had things like parasites. Now the question is, did parasites come in and then drop her system, or did her system get dropped by food sensitivities or other factors that brought the defenses down that allowed parasites to enter her system? I'm talking four-foot worms coming out of her.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:30:01] Oh, Lord.
Josh Dech: [00:30:01] It's quite shocking. I'll show you some photos, Cynthia. It is shocking.
[laughter]
Josh Dech: [00:30:06] So, it's a lot. But that's what we have to consider. It's not so much the symptoms we find differentiating by age. It's really their ability to recover. So, if you're in that 30 to 40 range, you're just pushing that threshold to having a much longer recovery.
[00:30:20] But again, other factors like, “Have you been taking care of yourself? Do you exercise, eat healthy, etc.?” Let's look at mold. Mold is another driver for bowel disease that we often see, probably 25% of the time. But mold in children before the age of five, you could typically remove them from the environment, get them in somewhere clean, fresh outdoor air and they'll get rid of 95 plus percent of the molding system on their own without any intervention. You get somebody who's had it for 25 years. Not only one, are they older now, say 60, 70 years old, they have poor detox and drainage mechanisms, but it is also been in there longer and its more well established in how that mold grows and proliferates in the system.
[00:30:59] So, we have a lot of factors to consider. But symptomatically, I’ve had children at five years old with 25 bowel movements a day and I’ve had people in their 50s with five in no pain, a little bit of blood. And so, it’s quite different. But everyone can get better. Like Larissa, she actually got her colonoscopy report back, and its near perfect. It's been 16 weeks, and her doctor jaw on the floor is, “I was not expecting this, but here we are. Whatever you're doing, keep doing it.” And so, there's always something that can be done, but it is, like you said, very individualized.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:31:28] No, it definitely can be. As someone who spent 13 days in the hospital in 2019 with a ruptured appendix, pancolitis, small bowel obstruction, a whole slew of complications, I'm the first person to say that it was very humbling how long it took to go from-- in the hospital at the end, they were giving me bone broth at my insistence. But until I was able to get off of eating a full carnivore diet, because I tolerated zero fiber, finally got back to eating vegetables about 18 months later. Now I can eat all the vegetables to a point. But you're right. Children, younger adults have the ability to bounce back a whole lot more quickly than individuals who've crossed over that threshold into middle age.
[00:32:13] We've talked around the microbiome. Let's talk about what it is, why it's so important. The microbiome was not taught back in the dark ages when I was in my medical training. But now, there's a lot of focus on it, and helping individuals listening to this podcast understand why it is so critically important to have a healthy, robust microbiome.
Josh Dech: [00:32:35] Yeah, it's interesting. There's a direct correlation between, we talk about the diversity of your gut microbiome, much like nature in a rainforest, as there is towards your health. But even more interestingly, your mouth is the start of a digestive tract. But a great diversity of microbes in the mouth is actually associated with poorer health. We want less microbial diversity in the mouth. So, there's a lot of different things.
[00:32:57] Let's go to the gut microbiome, specifically looking at the intestines, less so the mouth. Your microbiome, I often argue it's as if not more important than your DNA. It actually influences your DNA. In fact, we look at this genetically, the human genome has, what, 23,000 depends who you ask genes inside of it. Your gut has about three million. So, you've got 130 times more genetic material inside of your gut than you do the rest of your DNA that makes you you. It comprises of everything inside of your body, influences your genetic factors as well.
[00:33:28] And so, looking at your gut, it helps with digestive health. They produce all kinds of good byproducts that help with inflammation, and immunity and everything else. They produce 90 plus percent of your neurotransmitters, which your brain needs to function and operate. If you have ADHD, probably a gut issue. 70% of your immune cells, they're actually nurtured, matured and grown inside of your gut. You have what's called your GALT or your gut associated lymphoid tissue, which is directly, that's your immune system that's attached to your gut.
[00:33:56] There's nutrient absorption, inflammation control. It protects against pathogens. It regulates a metabolism, helps with mental health, detoxification, cholesterol regulation, vitamin synthesis. It actually makes B vitamins and vitamin K. We harvest energy and excess calories because of your gut. There is so many different things that it does for us. I think the better question might be is what doesn't it do? It is directly connected to every aspect of your health, from hair growth to sleep to moods. Your gut bacteria can even determine how social you feel like being on a given day. And so, they influence everything.
[00:34:31] Without this healthy ecosystem, you can easily see once you go, “Oh, it's connected to all these things,” you can easily see how a small breakdown can have a big, dramatic cascading effect of health issues. In fact, 14 out of 15 of the leading causes of death, as per the CDC, they're chronic inflammatory conditions directly connected to gut health.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:34:51] It's so interesting. I could totally nerd out on the gut microbiome largely, because I do as you appropriately stated, it really impacts everything in the body. Now, one of the things that I find really interesting and probably worth talking about this bidirectional relationship between our enteric second brain and the brain. When you are working with your clients on the health of their overall digestive system, how often are you seeing individuals who are suddenly alleviated of things like mood disorders or their anxiety and depression improved upon or they have less ADHD symptoms largely, because it is such a resource of the bulk of our neurotransmitter productions in the gut. This bidirectional relationship, which we can talk about, the vagus nerve, which I love talking about.
Josh Dech: [00:35:39] I would say it’s almost everything. Yes, there are certain imbalances that can happen, head traumas and other malformations, genetic stuff. But it’s like you said, 90% of your neurotransmitters are made in your gut. These are the things that allow your brain, and your body and all the nerves. Right from your fingertips to your spine to your brain, they all communicate together. And it's bidirectional. You have your afferent and your efferent signals are sent away and signals come back. These nerve pathways are controlled, like signals jump across heads of each nerve because of these neurotransmitters.
[00:36:11] Literally, what it means, neurotransmitters taking a radio signal and sharing it. And so, we don't have these other dysregulated. Everything goes wrong. We've seen schizophrenia, bipolar, anxiety, depression, ADHD, even autism coming back to the gut. There's now research showing organic acids, these byproducts. I'll back it up a little. I sometimes get ahead of myself. I do apologize. [laughs]
[00:36:34] Everything in the body, we as a human being, as an organism with arms and legs, we eat, we breathe, we poop. So do your cells on a cellular level, they eat, breathe and-- It's called cellular respiration. That's breathing. And they poop out byproducts called organic acids. Now, some of them can make really bad stuff, some of them can make really good stuff. This is where you get your short chain fatty acids, which are beneficial for immunity, and healing and all kinds of good stuff.
[00:37:02] But then, you also have endotoxins. We'll use this big umbrella, or it's called LPS. It's lipopolysaccharide. These are really gnarly, toxic things. As they get around the body, they become highly problematic. But they will actually interrupt your neurotransmitter production, looking at certain opportunistic microbes, things that when given the opportunity will overgrow. So, antibiotic use, high stress, poor diet, etc., they take that chance and they overgrow.
[00:37:27] Looking at things like clostridia. For those of you who have been in hospital situations or dealing with gut issues, you're familiar with infections like C. diff or clostridium difficile. This is a really gnarly infection. But C. diff produces a lot of byproducts and a lot of toxins which greatly disrupt things like dopamine conversion. So, your body can't actually produce dopamine or serotonin properly, because it blocks these conversion pathways. You end up with moodiness, depression, irritability, anxiety, even neurological conditions like ticks, Tourette's, OCD, seizures can come from this overgrowth, these clostridia bacteria. So, there's a lot of cascades that happen from your gut in the things that they produce and how they work. Now, I hope I was answering the question. You want to dive into that second brain and how the gut brain develops, or did you want to go more to vagus?
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:38:14] Well, I would love to talk about the vagus nerve. It is not a nerve that we have spent any concerted time discussing, but it is one that is so critically important and I think, unfortunately, gets maligned. When I worked in cardiology, we talked about it a lot, because people would have episodes where they would pass out, because they stimulated their vagus nerve while they were defecating, urinating. Sometimes they would see someone getting blood drawn, they would pass out. That would as much as we thought of or discussed. But I think it's such an important topic for listeners to understand, because it is so intricately involved between that communication pathway.
Josh Dech: [00:38:52] The vagus nerve is really interesting. Correct me if I'm wrong on this one. I believe there's 12 cranial nerves. I haven't done this in 10 years since college. But there's 12 cranial nerves, a vagus nerve is one of those big ones. It comes down from the brain to get it down the left side of your neck, it's going to innervate your heart, your lungs, all your intestines and all these digestive organs are connected to this vagus nerve. But it's not just a signal. When you get stressed, yes, you're going to have that fight and flight mechanism which shuts down digestion or inhibits it, but it's a bidirectional communication. So, you get things that come from your gut which go to the brain.
[00:39:24] It's really interesting if we start to look at the second brain tie-in as well. I have a whole theory that I can get into maybe another time, but I'll give you an overview. It's actually about that gut feeling. If we look at your subconscious mind versus your conscious, this is all connected back to your vagus nerve in your brain and how these things operate. Your conscious mind, if you were to compare in driving speeds, it goes about 100 miles an hour. Whereas your subconscious is like 100,000 miles per hour at a rate it processes information. That's like having a three-legged turtle versus a millennium falcon jumping to hyperspace.
[laughter]
Josh Dech: [00:39:56] It's a very big difference in speeds. And so, this subconscious mind operates with that gut feeling, that vagus nerve. You have billions of neurons in your brain. You got about 400 or 500 million directly innervating all of your intestines, which go and connect into your spine, which sends signals up at the speed of light to the brain. And so, these gut feelings that we get can actually be impaired or inhibited. I believe, this is again my interesting theory, that by having gut issues and gut dysfunction, it's like having a sprained ankle. If you got to run away from a bad guy and your ankle sprained, you're going to be slow. How much slower will your stress responses be if your gut is mangled? This is back to that vagus nerve.
[00:40:34] When this communication goes back and forth, you have inflammation in the gut. It will send jacked up signals to the brain. And if the brain's jacked up, it'll send these messed up signals back to the gut. And so, this innervation of these neurons is so important to understand that it does more than just exist. It's the longest cranial nerve. It's part of that what we call that gut brain axis, how they communicate. There's responsibility for things like your vagal tone, which part reduces inflammation, again improves digestion, creates a calmer state of mind. It influences digestion, heart rate regulation, inflammation control.
[00:41:08] We just talked about a mental health component. There's so much that it does for us that we have to understand. There's nothing in the body that exists in and of itself inside of a vacuum. Right from your hair to your fingernails, everything is connected to everything else, because these communication and signaling pathways. The vagus nerve is a very interesting nerve. Very, very interesting.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:41:31] Yeah. It's interesting, because now I think thoughtfully about ways to stimulate the vagus nerve in a positive way. Gargling, humming, singing, all the ways that you can actually stimulate that vagus nerve in a beneficial way without actually contributing to further stress and duress.
[00:41:50] Now, we talked about the value of the vagus nerve. I'd love to pivot a little bit and talk about what constitutes a healthy gut microbiome. We know having a healthy vagal tone is obviously part of that. In your estimation, let's talk about keystone bacteria, some of the ones that you think are really important and why having a healthy gut microbiome is beneficial for things like weight management, blood sugar regulation, etc.
Josh Dech: [00:42:15] That is an excellent question. So, there is a correlation. I don't think it's as simple as saying big diversity means really good gut health overall, but there's a correlation to it. So, you've probably got 1 to 2,000 different species, 7 to 9,000 different strains, giving you 15 to 20 million different varieties of bacterium, multiplied out to approximately 50 to 100 trillion individual bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites, all living in harmony inside of your gut. There is even things like, we think parasites are all bad. There's actually one called, I believe it's called Trichuris suis, if I'm not mistaken. I think it's a hookworm, if I'm not mistaken. I could be on that one. But anyways, it's actually been shown to beneficial in the inflammatory responses of bowel disease.
[00:43:02] And so, it's not saying we want to infect ourselves with parasites. This is to say that a healthy microbiome communicates with itself and with each other. They send all these positive signals to and from the rest of the body looking at weight loss and weight management. There are some really popular ones now in the media like Akkermansia. I believe you pronounce it fancy as Akkermansia, [laughs] but these are all really great microbes, because they have certain signaling pathways. These postbiotics, they create-- If you take a probiotic, that's your living organism. Fish and a fishbowl analogy. Your fish in the fishbowl is the probiotic. It eats and breathes and poops. The prebiotic is fish food that comes in. The postbiotic is what the fish poops out.
[00:43:42] Now, if we have these really good beneficial microbes like Akkermansia, it will take its prebiotic, whatever fibers of foods you happen to give it and it turns into these beneficial postbiotics. Many of these bacteria produce, again, short chain fatty acids, but they also produce signaling molecules. These are part of those messengers back and forth. You have an entire city ecosystem. It has to operate through communication. City hall, when there's a fire, the fire department's not going to know unless there is a dispatch who gets the call, who sends a signal to the fire truck, tells them where they are, they go and get there and report back. It's this communication. And so, things like Akkermansia can actually help with insulin resistance and insulin regulation. Estrogen, there's so many things that they signal back and forth.
[00:44:26] Now, you've got 15 to 20 million of these different bacteria doing this on a nonstop basis inside of your gut. And so, in my opinion, a healthy gut, yes, we see diversity, but it's also one that communicates effectively, inefficiently. It's not bloated, it's not gassy you eat. You shouldn't be like, if you're really farty, you probably got a dysbiosis, even if it's low-grade spectrum right now. It's nothing Crohn's or colitis. You have a dysbiotic state. The smellier the gas, the worse that dysbiosis is because these fish are pooping out bad, smelly byproducts. You shouldn't be stinky. Body odor is a byproduct of what's inside. Acne, psoriasis, eczema, they're byproducts of what's inside. A healthy gut microbiome reflects a healthy body, and it reflects as one that benefits you.
[00:45:11] If you've got PMS symptoms, really bad, dark, thick, clotted blood, you're having really severe breast tenderness or moodiness, maybe you've got erectile dysfunction, you're dealing with really low libido. These can all be gut issues that cause a cascading effect through the rest of your hormonal profiles. It's quite dramatic. I think we underestimate our gut bacteria quite a lot.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:45:33] Now, I love that you talked about one of my favorite bacteria, the keystone bacteria of Akkermansia. We do know that it's important for-- [crosstalk]
Josh Dech: [00:45:39] There's a fancy pronunciation again. [laughs]
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:45:41] Well, that's how I learned it. But having said that, it's like tomato-tomato. [Josh laughs] But understanding how important it is in the role of creating mucus. And yes, mucus is very important for the small intestinal lining, short chain fatty acid production, GLP-1, which we talk about a lot on this podcast. We also know it's intricately involved in reducing the damage from lipopolysaccharides. So, you alluded to the LPS, the thing we want to avoid as much as possible. Probably what gave me food poisoning in Morocco, which then ultimately led to the ruptured appendix, was significant LPS damage.
[00:46:14] But I think for individuals that are listening to the podcast may or may not be familiarized with the term, dysbiosis. Can we define what that is specifically, so that people have a better understanding? Dysbiosis is not good. I can tell you from looking at thousands and thousands of stool samples, there's varying degrees of dysbiosis. Sometimes it's very mild. It can be quite significant. Usually, people that have a lot of dysbiosis have a lot of symptoms, whether they're cognizant of it or not.
Josh Dech: [00:46:40] Yeah. If we simply say like the word, lets define dysbiosis, its exactly that. It’s a disruption of the normal healthy gut microbiome. And so, you have other harmful bacteria, these opportunistic, where they take the opportunity to overgrow. They’re in abundance. They outnumber the beneficial ones or they’re in higher levels than they should be. And so, consider your gut like a city. In this town, you have baristas, school teachers, police, you have construction workers, plumbers, electricians. And then, just on the outskirts, you got a bunch of bad guys selling crystal meth. Not a great thing to [Cynthia laughs] introduce next to a playground. But consider this.
[00:47:18] Now, we get rid of all the police. They died off. The school teachers and baristas died off. What do the meth dealers do? They come in, because there's now nobody to stop them from coming in. These are your opportunistic microbes. They produce a lot of bad stuff and bad byproducts. This is a state of dysbiosis. It's imbalanced in favor of the bad guys. But these bad guys, whether we like it or not, beat this analogy to death. The crack dealer at the gas station still contributes to the economy in some way. Whether we like it or not, that's the truth. Your fungi, your parasites, these viruses that live inside of us, they contribute to the ecosystem of the body in some way, shape or form.
[00:47:55] Candida, we often demonize it, because we hear about candida overgrowth, but it produces something like 15 different byproducts. And most of them are actually good. It's when they overgrow and turn into what is called this hyphal form, where they spread and turn into this stringy type of fungus. It creates this web like structure, blocking certain things, creating excess bad byproducts your body can't handle. This is dysbiosis, and this is a very big problem. But like you said, it's a spectrum of severity.
[00:48:24] So, right now, a little bit of dysbiosis, I'm a little bloaty, little gas, I'll change my diet. Within a week or two, my gut bacteria can rebalance, provided it's got what it needs. But if you continue to hammer it, you push this dysbiotic state, this imbalance of bacteria contributing to worsening issues, and now you have this cascade of effects, like a leak in your roof, now you got mold in the floor.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:48:47] Yeah. It's so interesting to me. When we're talking about dysbiosis, and again, the spectrum that is on, what ere the some of the other common-- I'm sure you do diagnostic testing with your clients. What are some of the other common signs, symptoms you will see on testing, stool testing, specifically that identify that there is a less than healthy gut microbiome where there's a lot more going on underneath the hood? You mentioned dysbiosis. You mentioned some candida. What are some of the other things that you're specifically looking for that help you identify when someone has some opportunistic infections, imbalances, things that could be contributing to the symptoms they're experiencing?
Josh Dech: [00:49:29] Really good question. When we look at most microbiome testing, they're often made for general populations. So, you can look at it and go, “Oh, I'm imbalanced”. So, they measure them in red, green or yellow. You're on the scale left or right. You can see based on the colors, what's imbalanced. And so, we do want to see green numbers across the board, because if you're green on the bad guys, it's homeostasis. If you're green on the good guys, you have a good, healthy gut microbiome. But the truth is, even the best tests, shotgun sequencing and all, they'll get a couple hundred different types of bacteria, but we're not getting the multi-thousands and millions of different genetic types. So, we are missing quite a lot of data.
[00:50:05] So, it's getting a grain of sand on the beach and saying, “What's my beach going to look like?” It's really hard to say. But ultimately, we don't actually do a lot of testing anymore in the gut microbiome, because you can come in and say, “Look how disruptive my gut microbiome is. Look how imbalanced it is.” But it doesn’t tell me why. It is like going in for a colonoscopy. Not that I’m saying you guys shouldn’t, like, “Listen to your doctor. I’m legally obligated to tell you.” But a colonoscopy will tell you what is happening in the body, where it is happening and how severe it is. But it is not telling you why it’s happening. So, someone comes in with a dysbiosis on their GI map, their stool sample, I can see their bacteria is a big mess. I want to know why.
[00:50:44] So, what I might look for is different markers. I might look for things like what's called steatocrit, how much fat is in your stool, because you're not breaking down and digesting. Elastase, what is your pancreas doing? I might look at things like eosinophil activation protein. Eosinophils are a white blood cell strongly associated with parasite activity with an elevation in these, maybe you have a condition called EOE or eosinophilic. There's that word, again. Esophagitis, I can see on top of maybe the other symptoms you're experiencing, there's a parasite condition. SIBO or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. There is all these leading indicators. So, it's not that a GI map is useless. It tells you a ton of great stuff.
[00:51:24] In fact, I would be very inclined to use them on the back end of a gut health program. I can come in, I look at your symptoms, your history, how did you get here? If you have any testing, bring it in. Well, look at some keystone markers like those. The body's actions, less so, the gut composition, because that's a byproduct of something else. What is your body doing? We find the root cause, and then we can get a stool sample, maybe on the back end as the cleanup and optimization of your gut health. Now, that we fix the problem that caused your gut bacteria to go off, let's see what's wrong in your gut bacteria to rebalance it as best we can, and then let nature take its course, because we can't do it all. There is nothing we can do magically that the body won’t do. We just facilitate those processes.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:52:04] Yeah. I love that you’re alluding to the fact that there is a place for testing, but really getting a good history, really understanding your patient or client is critically important. I would argue GI map is probably my favorite. We will start from there. There is certainly clues on the GI map that will at least give me some sense if someone has significant H. pylori, they've got a lot of candida. I usually say, where H. pylori and candida reside, SIBO typically will hide. There are some markers. So, I always say we never jump right to SIBO testing, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. You can also have SIFO, small intestinal fungal overgrowth.
[00:52:44] Usually, you're very symptomatic. That's usually not something you can pretend is not there. Are there other types of testing that you like to do with your patients, or there other types of stool testing that you prefer or lean towards when you’re working with clients?
Josh Dech: [00:52:57] I love an organic acid test. They’re extremely powerful. I’ve had to pick one test ever to do with anybody. It’s the only one I could ever rely on, it would be an organic acid test. They tell us so much. We can see bacterial overgrowths. There’s certain markers you can look for to say, “Yes, they have dysbiosis.” Again, I don’t need to dive into the details yet. It’s the first initial. Let’s do that. I can see fungal overgrowths, we can see many strains of mold, we can see clostridia, which is a really gnarly bacteria which we talked about, causes all those neurological issues. We can see that.
[00:53:28] If you guys think back to high school, if you ever took science and basic biology, you remember the Krebs cycle. We can detect all this on an organic acid test, nutrient imbalances, detoxification. The ones that we use are 76 different markers. Remember, we talked about the fish in a fishbowl? All your cells eat and poop. They poop out these organic acids. Going to the gym, you work out, your muscles start to burn. That's lactic acid. It's a byproduct of what your cells are doing from just existing and living. We can measure 76 different markers from urine alone, which give us indicators of what's going on inside of the body. So, if someone comes in with dysbiosis, and we can detect some things in their organic acid test, it gives me more indicators to see what their body is doing. It’s information that I can interpret like a language comparing it with the rest of the information we have to help us point toward the root cause.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:54:18] Oh, I love that. It is interesting-- For individuals that are listening, the organic acid test, if read by someone that is very good at it, can be very helpful. What I sometimes see, no judgment when I say this, is that we have individuals who are not familiarized with the test, they order it, they don’t know how to interpret it and it ends up being a very expensive test, if you aren’t working with someone that knows how to interpret it properly.
[00:54:42] Now, I would love to pivot a little bit and talk about the role of nutrition. When you’re working with patients and clients, we know that you can get changes in the gut microbiome with even one day of dietary changes. So, I always say it’s a marathon, it’s not a race. And so, it may take time to bring in more nutrient dense foods, get rid of the ultra-processed foods. Talking about food first and then pivoting a little bit. Everyone loves talking about supplements. If you have a couple high level supplements that you love working with, and I will tie in some of my own favorites as well.
Josh Dech: [00:55:16] Yeah, I would love to. Nutrition is one of those things where I will simplify it down to its finest parts. If your great, great, great grandmother would not recognize it as edible, don’t eat it. It’s that simple. This is the crazy part though, Cynthia. I say this to people and say, “Look, anything that's from a bag, a microwave, a drive through a freezer section, don't get it. It's not going to be good for you.” And they say, “Well, what do we eat then?” It feels like we're animals raised in captivity. The first time we're let out into the wild, we don't know how to fend for ourselves. [Cynthia laughs] We just don't know what food is anymore.
[00:55:48] The reality is, unless it grows on a tree, on a bush, in the land, swims in the sea, walks, flies, crawls if that's what you're into, it's something that we can eat. These are the foods that we've existed on since the beginning of time. It's only the last hundred years we've been making other foods that we've never existed on, and now we're all sick. We've had 98% of these foods never existed, neither did 98% of our diseases. It's a great meme floating around the internet. Distills it down to a meme. That's what it is. [chuckles] So, that's my nutrition advice.
[00:56:17] We get people coming in with really bad gut diseases, Crohn's, colitis, even severe IBS. Most of them, I'd say 90%, 95% are well versed in nutrition already. And so, their thing is, I don't need to deal with your nutrition. You're already optimized. You know what you can tolerate, what's inflaming you, what's not. You're eating really well, 99% of it. But I will say this. If you are very sick, your gut is highly inflamed. I'll be the analogy king today. Picture it like having a broken leg, if you fell off the third story and you broke your leg in a few places, you go to the surgeon. Their job is to go in to stitch, to put pins and needles and repair and cast that leg up, and then you can heal up and start walking around the block. The problem is most people have a broken leg. They're saying, “I'm going to get better.”
[00:57:02] They eat well for a week. The leg is just barely starting to heal. The inflammation is just coming down and then they go and jump on the trampoline, and eat waffles or candies or beer or something else and wonder why they're constantly sick. If you continually reinjure physical, or chemical or biological injuries to an area, it will never heal. And so, we do have to be extraordinarily strict for some time, 90 days, maybe even upwards of six months before you can begin going for a walk and jumping on the trampoline, so to speak. And so, that is where nutrition comes in for me. Whole organic foods that existed 500 years ago, and then its things you can tolerate and that is going to be an individualized process. That is the first place. I think it is as simple as we can make the nutrition side of things. There was a follow up question, which I lost.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:57:45] No, no, that was very helpful and really speaks to the fact that we start small, and those big changes really do have a large impact. I was asking for some high level-- Everyone loves supplements. So, I was just curious. It's a common question I will ask guests, do you have a few favorite supplements that you use with some frequency or supplements that you're more interested in now? I'll give you my example. I love TUDCA. That is a supplement that I use a lot, talk about a lot. But I'm curious what you are working with right now that you're really excited about.
Josh Dech: [00:58:17] Yeah, I love that you brought up TUDCA. We use it almost with every single client, because drainage and detoxing is so important. You can go to basic stuff. I've got gut issues, so I want to soothe and cool my gut. Okay, slippery elm, aloe vera, sometimes curcumin, but you have to get like a nano or liposomal form, so it's not super bioavailable or absorbable. There's all kinds of little things we can use. But when it comes down to actually fixing the problems, TUDCA can be amazing, because it is a big long word the last A is acid. Basically, what it does, it can help thin out the bile, and clean up the bile ducts and dilate some of these areas, because we always talk about detox. I’m going to do a liver detox. I’m going to do a cleanse.
[00:58:56] And yes, your body is constantly detoxing. But I picture it this way. Detoxing is collecting trash. Drainage is putting it over your shoulder and carrying it to the curb. And so, you can detox all you want. But if you can't actually get it out, it's just moving from room to room. And so, we have to do proper drainage. TUDCA is a huge part of that drainage process, actually getting things out. But the challenge we start to run into, people say, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, your liver and your kidneys and they're always detoxing. You don't need to do anything with it.”
[00:59:24] Think of it this way. A broom and a dustpan is all you need to clean a single bedroom with nothing in it. Very, very simple. The problem is, that's what your body's used to having biologically from the dawn of time. When humans first walk the earth, we've had a broom and a dustpan. That's it. But now, we're dumping a landfill's worth of garbage into our house. The broom in the dustpan doesn't cut it anymore. So, we have to go to therapeutic grade supplementation to get our body cleaned out, so it can then maintain itself. This is where things like TUDCA come in.
[00:59:52] I'm a huge fan. Actually, my mentor, Curtis, got me into these. We now use a lot of coffee enemas, for example, because the caffeine actually acts as a static binder. It will go in, and physically, it's like taking a balloon and rubbing it on the carpet, then your hair and it pulls. It's a static binder. It will go in, and grab some of these toxins and pull them out of the system. Combine that with things like TUDCA, you can do all kinds of things in enemas. Most people prefer coffee, the traditional way, but I am taking coffee as an enema. And it works so well. There are all kinds of supplements we use.
[01:00:25] I'm a big fan of certain brands I'm not going to advertise for, but they have phenomenal products which help these drainage processes. So, my advice on supplements, yes, soothing, cool with your basics. But I would focus more so on drainage than I would anything else first. Give your body some clearance. Take that garbage out to the road, so your body can begin cleaning itself from the inside with the very basic tools it's only ever needed, and that's where I would go with supplements.
Cynthia Thurlow: [01:00:52] No, I love that. I know that you are fastidious about making sure you emphasize nutrition first, don't jump to the supplements. I know it is probably a condition response in North America that we reach for supplements, pills, potions, powders, before actually changing the nutrition or the lifestyle. And so, I echo those concerns. What's interesting is coffee enemas, I think because, I work in healthcare, so the word, enema, is not a visceral response for me.
[01:01:18] It's interesting how I have found for people who really need them, they can be highly therapeutic. I've had patients with very high mercury levels that have benefited from coffee enemas. Let me be clear. We're not telling anyone with high mercury to go use a coffee enema. I'm speaking high level. You work with a provider, you determine you've got a heavy metal issue, you go with their recommendations, as opposed to chelation therapy, which can be very hard tolerate. I do think that there's definitely a place once people get beyond the ick and ooh factor of administering a coffee enema.
[01:01:51] Having said that, I've so enjoyed this conversation. Please let listeners know how to find you, how to listen to your amazing podcast. If appropriate, to work with you directly, because one thing we did not talk about that we should on the next podcast, Josh healed himself from Crohn's, colitis, which is quite significant. Quite significant. Give me a couple of apostrophes after saying that. I would love for people to be able to connect with you, learn more about your work.
Josh Dech: [01:02:20] So, I will preface on that one. I didn't heal myself from Crohn's, colitis. I had really severe gut issues. I've had the blood in the stool, the mucus, 15-20 minutes transit times, weight loss, extreme like severe food sensitivities. I never got a diagnosis of Crohn's, colitis. I probably would have qualified for a diagnosis of colitis. I just refuse to see a doctor for it. So, at this stage, I've only ever taken the title of irritable bowel syndrome, really severe.
Cynthia Thurlow: [01:02:43] Okay.
Josh Dech: [01:02:44] But we have people all the time dealing with really severe Crohn's and colitis who have fully reversed it. Like, CT scans, MRIs, colonoscopies, gone. I'll tell you, Cynthia, it's really interesting in this industry and sad. I get roasted all the time. I've been harassed, I've had threats to my inbox. The minute I say, “This disease can be reversed,” it's like we're shifting a paradigm. And so, I want you guys to know, listening, if you're going, “Who's this guy? Who does he think he is? F him.” It's not about the fact that I'm going against everything your doctor said. We have this understanding. It's a huge emotional burden for people to come in and have to learn to accept.
[01:03:25] You wake up one day randomly sick. You were perfectly healthy, and now you're sick, and you're bleeding, and every bowel movement feels like you're giving birth and you have no energy. Your life falls apart. Relationships work, your ability to play with your kids, everything collapses. And for me to come in and say, “Yeah, I can fix that.” Who the hell am I? And so, I want to encourage you to maybe come in with an open mind. Just understand that everything in the body is a cause-and-effect reaction. Nothing happens randomly, especially inflammation.
[01:03:54] If you get pink eye, it is as simple as you touched your butt and didn’t wash your hand, you touched your eye. If you get a scraper cut on your hand that gets infected and inflamed, there is a bacteria in there. Inflammation above all else is a cause-and-effect reaction your body has brought in. The calvary to try to heal you and your doctors say, it's just genetic. You can't be genetically just inflamed. It can't be random. If numbers have gone up in bowel disease five times the last 30 years, it can't be idiopathic or unknown. It can't be just genetic, if 5% of the globe has 50% of the issues. And so, I encourage you just look into this. If you're hearing this and going screw him, just have an open mind. I get this a lot from the IBD community, but there's more that can be done. You've just not been given the answers.
[01:04:35] So, to answer that question more specifically there, Cynthia. If you guys want to find any information, anything at all, it can be found at gutsolution.ca. That's all singular. gutsolution.ca for Candida. We got the podcast there. There's the ReversABLE Podcast where your episode, actually, Cynthia, just came out a couple weeks ago. And within two weeks, actually made our top 10.
Cynthia Thurlow: [01:04:55] Oh.
Cynthia Thurlow: [01:04:55] Yeah, congratulations.
Cynthia Thurlow: [01:04:57] Thank you. [laughs]
Josh Dech: [01:04:57] We just did our 100th episode in our top 10 lessons learned, you made the list, which is really impressive. We've got a Crohn's, colitis specific podcast. You can, of course, reach out through the website, but everything can be found at gutsolution.ca.
Cynthia Thurlow: [01:05:11] Thank you. It's been such a pleasure. Let me be clear to listeners. One of the things that I really value about Josh, and certainly when I interviewed with you, I was so impressed with your knowledge base. I knew that you had a beautiful message that you could share with our community.
[01:05:24] The other thing that I think is really telling is that the work that you're doing is in conjunction with a lot of physicians and licensed healthcare providers. People refer their patients to you to work in collaboration to be able to heal them. So, bravo to the work that you're doing and for your advocacy.
Josh Dech: [01:05:40] Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to do it, and I'm so blessed to be able to have this platform that you allowed us to come here and just share this message for what could be irreversible people now have an opportunity. We get to work with doctors, lecture with doctors, teach the medical academies, this stuff. I just want the world to know. That's it. I'm really, really, really grateful you've had me here.
Cynthia Thurlow: [01:05:59] Thank you again.
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