Ep. 453 Gut Health, Immunity & the Impact of Stress on Digestion with Dr. Daryl Gioffre
- Team Cynthia
- 3 days ago
- 41 min read
I was thrilled to connect with Dr. Daryl Gioffre today. He is a certified nutritionist, gut health expert, and the author of two bestselling books.
In our discussion, we explore myths around immunity, looking at the importance of gut health and immune function, specific areas of physiology in the gut, the impact of plant-based compounds and diets, and gut-brain access. Dr. Daryl explains why we are only as good as what we digest, absorb, and assimilate, and shares the specific stool tests he uses in his practice. We also dive into supplementation, what the symptoms surrounding bloating can help us identify, why fiber is most important, and how trauma and stress can affect the immune system.
I know you will love this fascinating conversation with Dr. Daryl. It was such a joy to interview him!
IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:
Some common misconceptions about immunity
How the toxins in water, food, and air contribute to inflammation and weaken the immune system
Why hydrochloric acid is essential for digestion, and how it prevents diseases
What is leaky gut?
How addressing gut health can reverse autoimmune diseases.
Why women are more likely to develop autoimmune conditions
Gut bacteria are essential for breaking down oxalates.
The importance of following a balanced diet and avoiding blanket statements about certain foods
Long-term health benefits of having a purpose in life and making small positive changes every day
Dr. Daryl shares a simple biohack to improve digestion and explains what symptoms like bloating, intestinal pain, and blood in the stool could indicat
“Magnesium is the fourth most abundant mineral in the body, but it is the number one deficiency in the western hemisphere.”
-Dr. Daryl Gioffre
Connect with Cynthia Thurlow
Follow on Twitter
Check out Cynthia’s website
Submit your questions to support@cynthiathurlow.com
Connect with Dr. Daryl Gioffre
Transcript:
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:00:01] 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.
[00:00:29] Today, I had the honor of connecting with Dr. Daryl Gioffre. He's a certified nutritionist, gut health expert and author of two bestselling books.
[00:00:38] Today, we spoke about myths around immunity, the impact of gut health and immune function. Specific areas of physiology in the gut, we are only as good as what we digest, absorb, and assimilate, the impact of plant-based compounds and specific diets, the gut-brain axis, specific stool testing that he likes to use in his practice, the role of supplementation, symptoms around bloating and what they can identify, why fiber is so important and last but not least, trauma and stress and the impact on the immune system.
[00:01:11] This is a fascinating conversation and Dr. Daryl was a joy to interview. I know you will enjoy this conversation as much as I did recording it.
[00:01:22] I think it's incredibly timely to talk about immune boosting immune support because, you know, just my house, like I haven't gotten flu in almost 25 years and got flu this year probably from all the business travel that I do. And it's like one of my kids got mono one got RSV. I mean, it's just-- I feel like this has been what I would describe is it seems like there's been some degree of immunosuppression, probably related to the viruses mutating and just enough to make even healthy people susceptible.
Dr. Daryl Gioffre: [00:01:54] One of the things I always say is that if germs made us sick, we'd all be sick. In fact, we'd all be dead. So, germs are the complicating factor. But it's always about the biological terrain, and that's how my son had the flu the other day and he didn't beat it in three weeks. He beat it in like a day and a half because we were just throwing everything at it, but I was okay, my daughter Leah was okay, Chelsea was okay. Because it's like the garden, like when there is stress and that allows these opportunistic bacteria, parasites, whatever it might be viruses to now do what they're designed to do, which is survive. So, that's kind of like how I kind of always shift that, which is focus on yourself, and focus on what you can do to strengthen your body as much as possible, to not only get you through it, but to protect you moving forward.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:02:38] What do you think are some of the common misconceptions about immunity in general? I think, even though the pandemic is five years behind us, I still think that when I listen to patients and clients describe their concerns around, whether it's flu and cold season, whether it's they're traveling abroad or doing quite a bit of business travel. For you as a clinician, what do you think are some of the common misconceptions that most patients or clients have?
Dr. Daryl Gioffre: [00:03:05] Again, it's that, like, we're afraid of a bug. It's we have to live in a bubble. We have to be completely free or put all the stuff on our hands and the lotions and the potions and like “Don't catch the bug. If that person's sick, don't go around them.” I mean, yes, we got to be smart with our lives, but it's not about that, like, that's the biggest misconception.
[00:03:24] Again, it's like this German bug is not going to take you out. Listen, I hate to say it with Covid but there were some people that died, unfortunately, that was very sad. There was other people that got severe symptoms. There were people that got mild symptoms. I have clients that literally like I'll talk to them, because Covid is a priming factor. What I mean by a priming factor is that when you get hit with Covid people are like, “Oh, it's like the flu.” No, it's way more significant than the flu. You got to throw your immune system at it, but if I'm busy battling inflammation or food sensitivities or a stealth gut infection or insulin issues with diabetes, like, whatever it is, then maybe I can only give 20% of my army or 30%.
[00:04:01] Your body is smart. You don't have to tell your body what to do. It knows what to do, and it's going to basically give what it can give. So, if I can only throw 30%, 40% of my army out there, because that's what I have to do, because I have to deal with all this other stuff, then we become more vulnerable. And that's why you look at the people that got really, really sick. They were the ones that had other chronic inflammatory issues, inflammatory diseases, whether that was cancer, cardiovascular disease.
[00:04:27] For me, it's like, I was really frustrated because no one was talking about the gut during this time. It's like, we have to understand, this is something I definitely want to talk about. If you want to talk about, is that 80% of your immune system lives in your gut. So, we have to pay attention to the gut. It's your body's first line of defense. Yet no one was even addressing that. And the clients that I had that were really like-- I had a client this morning, I was doing a lab review with them, and we did like a GI map, took a stool sample test, and her new GI map, literally, she had like six or seven different inflammatory bacteria that were gone. All of her good probiotics were completely strengthened. Her inflammation levels, like, all the markers I want to see happen, it was amazing. But two things popped up, she had a norovirus, and she had a shingle like toxin, E. Coli bacteria infection. And this was something that she came across throughout the course of our six months working together, but she never got loose stools or diarrhea. She never threw up.
[00:05:26] And she had gotten norovirus about a year and a half ago, and she was like derailed. It took her out for four months. So, she's like, “How come I didn't get sick?” I'm like, “Well, you tell me why.” She's like, “Because my gut is strong.” I go, “But what is it about your gut that protected you?” She's like, “My immune system.” So here she has. Now we're going to deal with those infections. So, we put her on some natural antivirals. I did some Bio-Active Silver Hydrosol, and I put her on some black seed oil, and then I put her on something called Dysbiocide for the bacterial infection. Why we keep on strengthening her gut, but the coolest thing was is she was totally fine the whole time. So, we are more toxic than we've ever been in human history. We are being hit with toxins in the water that we drink, the food that we eat, the air that we breathe, EMFs which cause massive deregulation of our immune system.
[00:06:15] So ultimately, it's about like not being perfect. It's like tackling one thing at a time, like, what can I do in this moment to go to the next level? Progress, progress, progress. That could be a green juice. I say the green juice is the core of a strengthening diet, and you can't supplement your way out of a bad crap diet. So, let's start with that. If you're putting sugar in your body, well, what's sugar going to feed? It's going to feed these bad guys and that's going to basically make you more sick, not better. So, from a commonsense standpoint, it's like that's what we have to kind of focus more on. The very simple, easy things that we need to do, how about breathe more, how about go out and go for a walk and move our bodies more. Like the things that we're not doing because we're trapped in a box all day long.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:06:51] Now, you bring up so many good points, and you unknowingly don't know this, but my next book is talking about the gut microbiome and what changes in women in perimenopause and menopause because I feel like no one is really focusing in on this and how our gut microbiome, men and women or children, when they are growing up, the first big change and shift in the gut microbiome for women is when they go through puberty. And, we go full circle. So, it's puberty, pregnancy, postpartum, perimenopause, like these three big shifts. And then ironically, if you look at the research, women in menopause and men's gut microbiomes start to resemble one another again. So, it's like life comes full circle.
[00:07:33] But I do agree with you. It's the lifestyle piece that has such an enormous impact on the health of our microbiome vis-a-vis immune cell function. So, let's talk a little bit about the physiology of the immune system in the gut. What are the kind of key players? What are the kind of tangible things that we can share with listeners to help them understand what's going on in the gut? So, we talk about this first line of defense. Let's speak specifically to what this is so that they can understand a little bit better.
Dr. Daryl Gioffre: [00:08:02] Hydrochloric acid. I mean, Hippocrates said all disease begins in the gut. He was absolutely right. But let's go deeper into that. Well, I kind of take it one step further. I say all disease begins on your plate because garbage in garbage out. But hydrochloric acid is critical, so when I say you get off your acid, it is one of the taglines of my company. I'm not talking about the acid in the stomach. We need acid in the stomach. I'm talking about the-- Further down into the biome, we're talking about the toxins and inflammation and all that, but we need acid in the stomach.
[00:08:33] And as we get older, we don't get faster, we get a little slower, we don't get stronger, we get a little weaker, we don't produce more acid, we produce less acid and that creates three major problems. Number one, you're not what you eat, you're what you digest, absorb and assimilate, right? So, when you eat your food, if you don't have that hydrochloric acid right there, you're not going to digest that food, you're not going to break it down. Now you get this traffic jam. And that creates two problems. Number one, we're not getting those nutrients that we should be extracting from that food into our cells. So even when you're eating what I call a strength-eating, gut-balancing diet, that's loaded, even if it's organic, I don't care how perfect the food and diet is, if you're not breaking it down, you're not getting it into your body so you can actually be having malnourishment even when you think you're doing healthy.
[00:09:17] Number two, food sensitivities. Huge. There's a very short list. This ties into autoimmune diseases, thyroid issues, Hashimoto's all reversible, by the way. All autoimmune are reversible because you can have a pregenetic disposition, but it comes down to the gut dysbiosis and the leaky gut and the environmental trigger. So, the environmental triggers are critical. And one of those is food sensitivities. Because if you're not breaking down the food because of low enzymes and low hydrochloric acid, now it's like, “I eat that avocado, which I call God's butter. It's my favorite food. It's the perfect food in the world.” But that should be a tiny little avocado piece that the body can take in for fuel, but if that becomes a big avocado piece, the gut's like, “Wait a minute, you're tricking me. That looks like a Dr. Daryl avocado, but that's not, that's something else. That's like non self, that's foreign. We got to attack that.”
[00:10:04] So again, the immune system attacks that because it sees it as non self and the result of that is inflammation. We measure that through chemical mediators. It's an MRT test. So, it's not really about looking at an allergy test, it's about looking at chemical mediators because we can't break down our food and the inflammation. At the end of the day, we don't die of old days, we die of inflammation. So, food sensitivities become another big thing of low hydrochloric acid. And then the biggest one, which I kind of alluded to before, is this is your first line of defense. So, when we're drinking water, eating food, breathing in air, hydrochloric acid is your first line of defense. And that's where it meets anything bad and it should kill it. Something like H. Pylori, one of the worst infections for the stomach when it's in high level.
[00:10:46] So, when we have high levels of stomach acid or the right levels, then we can stop these gut infections from going deeper into the gut, where they love to basically set up their communities and their families and their children and blah, blah, blah. So again, it kills that off. But if we don't have sufficient levels of hydrochloric acid, it is a free entry right into the microbiome. And now we have all these gut infections that could be active virus, that could be inflammatory bacteria like Citrobacter or Pseudomonas or Klebsiella or E. Coli, like I found in a patient this morning, that could be a parasite.
[00:11:17] Parasites are big. Parasites cause a lot of different issues, including neurologic tics to the things that I found in one of my son's tests a few years ago when he was getting Tourette's like syndrome. So, the doctors blamed it on Tourette's, a stupid name which means nothing. And my son had a stealth infection in his gut, strep infection and a parasite called PANDA, “Pediatric acute neuropsychiatric disorder,” whatever they call it like what's the root cause? So, when you find that root cause, and it's again, a short list, it's food sensitivities, toxins, stealth gut infections, all those cause inflammation, all those cause leaky gut. And what happens once that gut wall is breached, they get into your body, now they become systemic.
[00:12:02] And we are only as strong as our weakest link. So, they'll hit the thyroid gland within a few minutes, what does that do? It causes the thyroid to create inflammation. So now we get a goiter or we get a nodule. And the doctors are looking at the thyroid, not looking at what the root causes. So, they'll cut it out or they’ll zap it out whatever it is, but again, it will resurface because you didn't address the inflammatory cause, which is the leaky gut. And that's where autoimmune ties into it, because now your immune system comes in with its first line of defense. The possibility, it's like blowtorches, it starts blowing stuff up. It just wants to kill any infections or toxins affecting that gland. So, what happens is we get this autoimmune response and the doctors actually see that and they're like, “Oh my gosh, this is so bad. Your body, your immune system, it went rogue on you, it's attacking your body. In fact, it decided just to attack your thyroid gland. It's so smart. It's just going after that gland right there. So, we're going to put you on immunosuppressive drugs for the rest of your life.”
[00:12:54] And let's test every six months let's pray and hope it doesn't go away. It's insane when you think about it. So, in the short run, medicine is the most brilliant thing ever. We have the best crisis care system, but we're not addressing root cause, which is what we call healthcare. So, what happens with that thyroid gland is that it starts to get attacked and your immune system comes in and starts to blow stuff up to lower that infection. Now there's this blown-up stuff everywhere. There's bad cells, there's damaged cells, but guess what, there's good cells that got destroyed because they were caught in the crossfire. So now you're more smart, part of your immune system called the adaptive immune response comes in and what they do is they take all those dead bacterial cells that were killed and all the bad stuff and they present, they engulf them like Pacman, and they present those to your BMT cells and they say, “Okay, cells, these are the bad guys. Make something called antibody to these bad guys, so if we're ever faced with this again, we can identify the second it comes into the body, we can kill it and we won't get sick.” But in that process, there's an accidental presentation of your good, healthy cells that got killed in the crossfire. And those get presented as well by accident. So now your immune system makes antibodies to your good healthy cells. And here we go, that's our autoimmune diseases.
[00:14:10] So, the way to actually reverse that is to get to the root cause, which is the toxins and the pathogens that created this in the first place. Because if you don't identify them, you'll never get rid of them. You can't kill them, you can't eradicate them. And you got to fix the leaky gut that stops them from getting in. They also attack the brain, causing brain fog. So, it's incredible how the gut is literally your immune system. I mean, they call the gut the second brain. I call it the first brain because it's where everything lives. Like 80% of your nervous system is there, we said 80% of your immune system is there, 95% of your serotonin, your happy, feel-good hormone is not made in the brain, it's made in your gut. How crazy is that? So that's something we have to pay more attention to.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:14:48] Yeah, you bring up so many good points. And one thing that maybe most of my listeners may or may not be aware of, women have hyperresponsive immune systems. And so that is both protective and also can become problematic. So, it protects us when we are pregnant so that our body does not recognize the fetus as non-self. But it becomes this dual-edged sword, especially as we are getting older, because our immune response, because it is so hyperresponsive, we are much more likely to develop autoimmunity. I think 80% to 85% of the cases are in women, so it is much less likely to see this in men. But I think for everyone that's listening, this is why I think gut microbiome, gut testing is so instrumental and so important.
[00:15:30] On my patients we run tests at least twice a year, if not once a year, to get a sense of what's going on. What I find really interesting is that pre pandemic versus post pandemic there were things I started seeing on stool testing that I had not seen before. And I really think that hopefully we're coming back around on the other side where there's greater awareness around what are the things that impact the gut microbiome, taking dysbiosis, taking leaky gut, taking food sensitivity seriously. And I know for myself that we can look at the big ones like gluten, grains, dairy, sugar, etc. But it's interesting how some people are more susceptible to these kind of more subtle things like oxalates, saponins, these kind of plant-based compounds.
[00:16:22] Do you feel like the awareness around these plant-based compounds is making people fearful to eat certain types of foods? Because I certainly see it across social media. I've had experts who are experts at like oxalates and they talk about the research and they've written books. And then I'll have listeners listen and they're like, “Oh, do I suddenly have to cut out all of these oxalate-laden foods? And I always say no. But if you have some gut issues going on, these things may be inflammatory for you and you may have to have a period of time where you exclude them to see if you feel better.
Dr. Daryl Gioffre: [00:16:55] Oh, you said so many amazing things in there. [Cynthia laughs] I want to tackle all of them if I can remember them. But the oxalates is not a spinach problem, it's a gut problem. You don't have the right amount and specific type of gut bacteria. Oxalate from agent that basically is designed to break down those oxalates. So, I put a whole page in my book about this because it frustrates me. I was thinking of the right word, infuriates, but it frustrates me because you have so many doctors out there telling their patients, “Don't eat green foods,” but we need green foods. You see this with a keto diet. I mean there is a good way to do keto if you do it and there's a bad way, there's a clean way and there's a dirty way.
[00:17:33] But one of the biggest mistakes I see people make with keto is they increase their fats. But what do they do? They're eating like all the bad fats. They're eating the seed oils and the proinflammatory fats that kill you. Because there's fats that kill and there's fats that heal. We want more of those omega-3 rich fats, things like chia seeds and hemp seeds and flax seeds. If you're going plant based, even in leafy greens like purslane, it's a weed, but it's like something that is very loaded with ALA, Alpha-lipoic acid or your deep cold water fish. These are things that lower inflammation.
[00:18:08] So, it's not like this one size fits all thing. And I think that's the challenge with so many people is that you'll see these like blanket statements like “Oh, don't eat this because it's high in oxalates.” And everyone actually believes that as true. So, ultimately, I think it's like you got to really know what outcome you want in life. First and foremost, you've got to develop a really strong enough and powerful why of your purpose because at the end of the day, if you want to break through and get healthy, yes, we can give you the strategy. Cynthia knows exactly what to tell everybody. I mean your information is amazing. We can give them the map, the massive action plan. But if they don't have that why then they're not going to have that powerful wherewithal to break through when they need it.
[00:18:45] When Covid happened, what happened? Most of us crawled into our foxholes, and some people still haven't come out. But those people that were exercising, they were doing fitness, they were eating good, healthy foods, they found the rhythm. It's not about being perfect, not about like having to like go 100%. No, it's about finding your balance or what I like to prefer called your rhythm, meditation, prayer, these are very powerful things. There was so much anxiety and depression, which is related to the gut. There's something called this gut-brain axis. And when you have these LPS, lipopolysaccharides, these endotoxins that die up in your gut. Well, if your gut wall is strong, we don't have to worry about it because guess what happens? They're self-contained and they get eliminated out through our poop. That's why my son loves to call it the poop test. [Cynthia laughs]
[00:19:29] But if you have leaky gut, which by the way, 100% of people have, don't believe the research. Some research will say 50%, some will say 80%. It's 100%. I do something called live blood cell analysis, where I prick a finger and I put the live blood sample on a microscope. We magnify it about 25,000 times and we're really looking at your live blood in real time. If you haven't done it's like the most fascinating thing you'll ever see. So, it's important to get your regular blood done through a doctor, which looks at the quantity of your blood. So, this is your vitamin D level, this is how many white blood cells you have, this is your liver enzymes, so we need the numbers.
[00:19:29] But here's the challenge is that you can have someone that has diabetes, you can have somebody that's on medication, you can have somebody that has cancer, somebody that runs marathons and their blood work actually can be very similar. So yes, we want to know about the quality, but when you look at live blood cell analysis, looking at your blood in real time, you're actually seeing how your epigenetics are, how your blood is responding to your lifestyle factors, how you eat, how you think, how you move, or for some people, lack thereof. And it's crazy because every tests—Cynthia, I've done thousands of these, 20 years plus of my practice in New York City, I've done thousands of these tests, and 100%, not 99%, 100% of every sample, including my daughter, who was three months old.
[00:20:46] My wife brought her into my office and I'm like, “I'm not pricking her finger. You prick your finger.” She's like, “You're the doctor. You do.” I'm like, “You're mom, you do it.” So finally, my daughter fell asleep. I pricked her heel and got the little drop of blood. And we found Candida in her blood yeast. It's okay to have Candida in the gut a little bit. We all do, because that breaks down anything that's dead, damage, decaying. But a lot of people have this overgrowth of Candida, which, again, we can see on a GI map test. You can see it on your tongue. It's white. It's called thrush. But we can see it in the blood. And the fact that I've seen that on every single sample I've ever done, sometimes a little bit, sometimes a lot, confirms that everybody has leaky gut.
[00:21:26] Now, I say that with a grain of salt, which means for some people, it's so small because they're taking very good care of themselves. It's not as big of an issue. But other people who are getting really sick, they have a lot of inflammation, other symptoms, whether that's skin issues, brain fog, slow metabolism, they can't lose weight, those are the people that have larger amounts of leaky gut. So, again, it all comes down to that leaky gut. I'm happy to go over some protocols to help people heal their leaky gut, because I want to talk about that, that, that today. I want to give people some solutions.
[00:21:55] You mentioned something about hypersensitive immune systems with women. And, I mean, God is just amazing how God provides for us and how we create this beautiful baby and how the body knows exactly what to do. It's like, we don't need to direct it. You get one cell from daddy, one cell from mommy that comes together in nine and a half months, you have this beautiful human being, but that power that made that body doesn't leave that body, continues to heal us. And it's the same thing with the mom that made that baby. So, there is a specific marker in the gut called secretory IgA, SIgA. And basically, that is your immune system in your gut. And we can measure this.
[00:22:31] This morning, I was going over a patient's lab review five months after we started care and put him on a protocol. And his secretory IgA, normally it should be 1,250. His number was-- I forget the exact number. It was like 4,200, which is insanely high. What that means is that his gut is under attack. There is a war going on there. There's a chronic inflammatory issue. It is literally one of the gold standards for looking at it for inflammation and there's also calprotectin. But the point was, that number being that high, he was in trouble.
[00:23:04] Now, of course, I didn't tell him that when we started. I empowered him and basically made him create the right choices with the right protocol. And we look at it today, it was around 1500. So, it was amazing how in just four months, the body is so forgiving. And when you put the right things in the body. If there's deficiencies and you give the body the things that it needs, and then you take out the things that's not serving your body's higher purpose, the toxins and the infections.
[00:23:30] Just like a plant, you give the plant water, give it nutrients, give it sunlight. All right, but that plant still will think what's going on? Because there's problems in the root system of that plant. You got to remove those toxins too. Well, what's the root system of the body? It's the microbiome. So, it really comes down to two things, deficiency and toxicity. And what we did with him, we gave his body the nutrients that he wasn't getting through diet. And by eliminating the food sensitivities and things like that. We strengthened his gut and his gut wall, and we eradicated these toxins, and we gave it a little bit of time and within four months, he had a flourishing garden again.
[00:24:04] And what I loved about it was his reflux was 95%-- No, he said 98% gone. I love that he's so analytical. He was feeling amazing. Energy was up, his sleep was better, weight was down. All these good things that happen as a byproduct of bringing health to the body. But I love it that the objective numbers also told the story that matched how we felt. So, it's just incredible when we focus in on the gut microbiome and you begin to heal it, your entire body heals. I'm not just talking about physically. I'm talking about emotionally, chemically, and even spiritually.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:24:33] Yeah, I think a lot of people probably don't realize that we make the bulk of our neurotransmitters, as you mentioned, serotonin, dopamine, all of these very important signaling molecules in the body. So, when our gut is not in a kind of pristine circumstance, we are more likely to experience mood disorders, we are more likely to have anxiety, depression, etc. And so, I love that you are able to kind of navigate healing your patients gut microbiomes and guts and get them back to a degree of homeostasis.
[00:25:06] Now, I'm curious. And I always use the same analogy when I'm looking at secretory IgA. I always do that-- We're sending out the troops to battle, something is acutely going on or now your SIgA is really low, which tells me, they're worn out, they've had to go home, they're exhausted. When you're navigating, kind of creating protocols for your patients, what are some of the high-level things that you focus in? I know you've identified eliminating inflammatory foods, working on specific protocols with them, but what are some of the high-level things that you'd like them to consider when they're working with you?
Dr. Daryl Gioffre: [00:25:42] Okay, I love that. I want to just briefly touch base upon what you said about the secretory IgA, because we see both ends of the spectrum. So, if 1250 is like the aim, imagine that's the number of bad troops in your gut. So, he had a very high level. That's not as bad as what you just said, which is all of a sudden that goes completely south and low. Because when it goes low, let's say less than 250, now your gut is in a weakened state. At least he, with that number greater than 4,000 was a mounting a response, a defense. He was going after it, they came after him, he went back after that, right?
[00:26:18] But now what happens is that these gut infections and the toxins, if we don't know they're there, they're like snipers, they begin to take out your army. And what happens is you brought in the army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marine. Heck, you brought in the National Guard. You were fighting, but you couldn't withstand that because you didn't know it was there. We didn't know was there. And they kept coming at you. So eventually our troops started dwindling and dwindling and dwindling. So many patients, I see that less than 250, and I'll say “This is what's going on in your gut,” just like you said. So, I loved your analogy. “All right, you have 250 troops in your gut right now. And the army that you're fighting has 1,250. Tell me where that war is going.” And they go like this, and they go like this.
[00:26:58] And when you see that, it just shows that your gut has become massively weakened. You have significant leaky gut, you have dysbiosis and also food sensitivity. So even when it's in that state, it's reversible. So, I think there needs to be three approaches. You have to start with the diet because you can't supplement your way out of a CRAP diet. CRAP, completely refined and processed. And you mentioned anxiety and depression. They did a study last year, Journal of American Medical Association, it was JAMA Open Network. And what they found was that the group that had nine servings of ultra-processed foods.
[00:27:30] What is ultra-processed? I say it's three awful ingredients. It's sugar, seed oils, and refined salt. So, it's like those three, which is like the perfect storm. So that when you go to the grocery store, you're not going to buy one bag of chips, you're going to buy five bags of chips, you're not going to open it up and eat one, you're going to devour the whole bag. Listen, I've been there. I was massively addicted to sugar. So, you have to really clean up the diet because the Group A ate the nine servings had 50% more likelihood of anxiety and depression than the group that had four servings or less. So, diet is critical. All right, what's the first three letters of diet? So, it's not about going on a diet and going off and yo-yo, it's about just finding a rhythm and a lifestyle that works based on foods that strengthen you. So that's where it has to start. We have to add in food.
[00:28:17] So, someone out there is eating lots of sugar and crappy carbohydrates and bad things like that. It's like the white-knuckle probes you can do that by deprivation, but I don't like deprivation. Didn't work for me. It got me maybe a few months. But you have to add in foods that really are going to strengthen your biome from the inside out. And then we have to focus on what specific supplements are going to strengthen the gut. So, you have to take a probiotic. I mean, there's five supplements that everybody needs to take, our children, I started my kids on these when they were very, very young. And even our parents and the elderly. You need to take magnesium, which is critical for sugar cravings, for your nervous system. It's the number one neuroprotector of your brain. You get about 200 mg from the food that you eat. If you're eating about 80% plant based, the rest of that you have to supplement. We just don't get it. It's not in the soil. It's not in the animals that are eating the soil and the plant, so we have to supplement that.
[00:29:05] Omega-3 fatty acid is number two. The cause of 96,000 preventable deaths is omega-3 deficiency. So, we have to get the fish oil to balance also those omega 6s in our body and our brain, probiotic is three, four and five is D3 and K2. So those are the five that every supplement, every patient, no matter what's going on, they have to get that. Now, we like to look at the D levels because some people are so far in the basement, on average I'll do about 5000 IUs of D3 with some K2. But some people, like the patient this morning whose immune system was so dysregulated in the gut and the body, like I had him on 20,000. So again, it all depends on where they're at, but if you don't know your vitamin D levels, don't start throwing darts in the dark. Like you got to know what your D levels are so you can accurately get the right amount. So, like that's the four or five that everybody really needs to be taking.
[00:29:55] I take a green juice powder. Like we have an amazing green juice powder, it’s like acid kicking green juice powder. So, I do that every morning, I do minerals every night. Because again, we're so deficient in minerals. Magnesium is the fourth most abundant mineral in the body, but it's the number one single biggest deficiency in the western hemisphere. So, we need that for our brains, we need it for our cardiovascular system.
[00:30:17] Now, higher level, I'm happy to go anywhere with that because we can talk about leaky gut, we can talk about the inefficiency of the digestive system so how to help us digest foods and some good bio hacks for that. Digestive enzymes. If your poop is floating, it means you're not digesting your fat. So, you have a sluggish gallbladder or we can talk about more specifics in terms of like pathogens and what we do to eradicate those.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:30:38] Oh, I think I definitely want you to talk about leaky gut and then talk about digestive supports. The reason being as I'm finishing up my book right now, this is what I've been working on the past week is the supplement piece. Kind of high-level supplements, like giving people options whether it's enzymes, bitters, tadka, all these components that I find in most of my female patients as they're getting older, like north of 40, almost everyone needs some degree of digestive support. And for some individuals this can be life changing. Like something so simple that can make that much difference in the way that they feel, the way that they break down and assimilate their nutrients, etc.,
Dr. Daryl Gioffre: [00:31:17] Yeah. Love that. So, I always like to try to give some good bio hacks that are less expensive that people can do and then I can name some supplements as well. I have no connection to any of these. I just talk about the ones that I use and I give my patients. But if some-- Bloating is a big thing. Bloating its huge for everybody, not just females, but even male, they suffer from bloating. And when you are bloating, it means that you are not digesting your food. Just like what you just said it, Cynthia, and I'll say it again, “You're not what you eat, you're what you digest, absorb and assimilate.” So, if you get bloating after a meal, it means that you are not breaking down that food and it's stuck in transit. And now there's going to be problems because again, you're not going to get the nutrients now you get low energy, chronic fatigue, it all ties in together.
[00:32:00] So, a very simple hack that you can do is 20 to 30 minutes before your biggest meal of the day. For most of us, that's going to be dinner time. What I want you to do, get 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar and you're going to put that in one-third cup of warm water. Ideally warm water, it's room temperature, not a big deal. But warm water, because that increases the gastrin production in your stomach, which in turn creates more hydrochloric acid. So, remember I said before, the hydrochloric acid deficiency is the cause of all dis-ease, lack of balance, lack of harmony, which leads to disease over time.
[00:32:30] The biggest cause of hypothyroidism is low hydrochloric acid because you're not assimilating the magnesium, the iodine, the selenium, and the vitamin D that the thyroid needs to function and to create the T3 to convert T4 to T3. So, what we're going to do is 1 tablespoon ACV. All right? Raw, put that in one-third cup of warm water 20 to 30 minutes before your biggest meal of the day drink that on an empty stomach, that's going to gently increase the hydrochloric acid in the stomach. It actually, even though it's an acid outside of the body, it has an alkalizing effect on your digestive system, which is good. And it helps to also increase your digestive enzymes. And just from doing that one little simple hack right there, it's amazing how much people feel better.
[00:33:11] If that doesn't do it after a few days, then you probably need a digestive enzyme. So, there's a lot of great digestive enzymes out there. I just want my pure encapsulations and critical digestion. I mean, whatever one you want to use. But what you want to do is take one capsule after the first bite of every meal. Big meals, like, if you're having a smoothie, don't worry about it. You're having a snack, don't worry about it. But if you're having a big plate food, what you want to do is have one capsule after the first bite and that's going to help you break down the proteins, the fats, and the carbs in your food. So that, number one, you don't get the bloating. But number two, downstream as the digestive system carries the food down, everything's going to--
Because it's like, look at your digestive system like a conveyor belt. And if, like one person on that conveyor belt doesn't do their job, what happens? [crosstalk] Everything else downstream gets affected by that. So that becomes important. And speaking of the conveyor belt, digestion starts in your mouth. So, I'm a New Yorker, originally from New York. I’ve been in Naples almost three years, hoping it slows me down and calms me down, but I still have that New York mentality where, we walk fast and we talk fast and we eat fast, but digestion starts here. So, you have to chew your food into a smoothie. It's so important because this is where digestion starts. So really chew your food and get yourself some set up for success as it goes further down. So that's for bloating and for like upper GI. That also helps the enzymes in the hydrochloric acid.
[00:34:34] If you have a sluggish gallbladder, if your stools are floating, it means you're not digesting your fat. That's a big, big, big problem. So, something simple is just add more beets and beetroot juice into your diet. Now, I personally hate beets. My wife loves them. But beetroot juice I love. In fact, like, when my kids were younger and they hated the green color of the green juice. I would put a little beetroot juice in there just to give it that kind of purple color. My daughter loves purple and pink. So, boom, she was doing it just for that one little hack. But beets and beetroots are very good for your gallbladder function.
[00:35:05] So now we’ve got upper GI working better. Now we've got to heal and seal that leaky gut. So, this is the most powerful protocol for leaky gut. You're going to have to get two supplements for this. The first one is something called bioactive silver hydrosol. So, it's not colloidal silver. It's a form of silver. It's not colloidal, so don't buy colloidal. You can either use Sovereign Silver, which many people might have heard about, which I love, or Argentyn 23. It's the same thing. One is just a little bit more stronger, the Argentyn is stronger. So Sovereign Silver is less expensive, let's choose that. And then you're going to get liquid aloe vera. It could be George's Aloe, which I like because it's got a very neutral taste or it could be Lily of the Desert. And what you're going to do is take one tablespoon of the Sovereign Silver or the Bioactive Silver, combine that with one tablespoon of the George's Aloe, you mix it together, you drink that on an empty stomach three times a day for a period of two weeks. Okay. What constitutes empty stomach? You need at least 30 minutes clearance time before a meal with no food or 90 minutes clearance time after a meal with no food. So, three times a day, one tablespoon of each empty stomach and you do that for two weeks.
[00:36:12] The silver is amazing because it is antiviral, it is an antibacterial, it is an antifungal. It kills mold, something that I'm very passionate about. It's also an immunomodulator. So, it's going to help you boost your immune system function in your gut. And then the aloe vera is very soothing and healing. It helps your leaky gut, helps your mucus production, and it also protects the silver down in transit past the stomach acid, if you have any, into the gut, and then it lets it go. And again, it just soothes, it calms. It's great for people with acid reflux, another big passion of mine. But what it also does, it heals and seals that gut wall. And I've had through testing, we're looking at specific markers called Zonulin, which I'm sure you know of in the gut, which looks at basically how open the gap junctions are. We've been able to test this and show that within two weeks we can heal literally over 90% of that leaky gut in like the worst of worst cases.
[00:37:05] Some patients, I'll do it four weeks. There're some patients, I'll do it eight weeks because again, there's more severity to what's going on, so we have to kind of adapt accordingly. But if you did that for two weeks, you're going to be in so much better shape, you're going to feel better, your digestion is going to improve, your poops are going to better, you'll be more regular and energy is going to be going up, and your hormones will start to self-regulate better because they're not being bombarded with toxins from the gut.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:37:28] Yeah, I think it's so interesting because, you know, I'm traditional allopathic trained, I also have functional training and we never learned anything about small intestine hyperpermeability. And there are still people that are western medicine trained that do not believe in its existence, but yet there's so much emerging research. And you mentioned that all of us have experienced leaky gut. There’s post meal endotoxemia that people can get where they get this transient leaky gut. Sometimes if you exercise too intensely, you can develop transient, which means short term leaky gut. What we're speaking to, what you're speaking to specifically is something that has become recurrent or is ongoing. It is not just a transient, it is something that's ongoing.
[00:38:14] What are some of the signs that patients will report to you if there's something else going on? If it's not just leaky gut, maybe if they have other opportunistic infections. I think one of the-- I would say seems very timely is that Candida, yes, we hear about Candida quite a bit, but SIBO kind of seems to come and go in terms of focus and provocation. And I know if you're looking at the GI map, I always say there's signs in many instances where I'm like, this patient probably has SIBO, but that's not the first thing that we deal with. We kind of think of digestion as a north to south process. So, H. Pylori, Candida get dealt with first. When you're talking to your patients, what are some of the signs that they'll share with you that get you thinking that there's something else going on beyond just the leaky gut?
Dr. Daryl Gioffre: [00:39:00] There's typical symptoms, which is bloating, indigestion. So many people have that. Constipation is a huge one. 42 million Americans reportedly think the number's way higher. Clearly, we need more fiber in our diet. I mean, only 5% of people are getting the recommended 25 to 35 g of fiber. I think that number should be up in a 50-gram number, but those are like classic symptoms. But you're looking at deeper stuff like intestinal pain. That's a big one and it's in different areas of the biome. They'll say their stomach. I always have to have them point because it's never their stomach. It's always deeper down. And when it is a stomach, usually it's something like acid reflux or H. Pylori, like you mentioned. So intestinal pain is a big one.
[00:39:38] Sometimes blood in the stool doesn't always indicate a severe issue like cancer. It could be inflammation from stealth pathogens. I mean, I have seen so many stealth-- I had this one client that had nine stealth pathogens, which are stealth gut infections in her gut. And we look at her cold blood on the GI map, and it was very, very high. And, she was alarmed by that. And yes, you always have to always think, can it be this? Always rule things out, but at the same time, she was under attack and there was so much inflammation, that was her problem. And at the end of the day, that could lead to cancer because we don't die of old days. We die of inflammation. That could lead to diabetes, that could lead to Alzheimer's, which parallels inflammation of the brain, but it's not just the gut, Cynthia, we have to look more downstream, because when I start to see the downstream problems, that tells me there's more chronicity to this.
[00:40:27] So, brain fog is a huge one. I suck-- When I had mold attacking my body, my gut specifically, it was horrific. I called it brain debilitation. It was so bad that if we were talking like this, I would have to write down the questions you were asking me because the processing speed of my brain was so messed up, four areas of my brain were atrophying. We did an MRI with something called NeuroQuant, something very big in the mold world or what we call CIRS, chronic inflammatory response syndrome. But what happens is it doesn't matter if it's mold, bacteria, a virus, a toxin. Once you have that breach in the gut wall, then it comes into the circulatory system, it's going to go under the attack. So, for me, it attacked my brain. For my son, it attacked the brain. And every few seconds he was getting these neurologic tics like this. As a parent, it was horrific when I didn't know what it was at the moment and you can't help your kid. And you would trade anything, like, give me the worst pain, whatever it is, I will take that on if you heal my son, like we'll do anything.
[00:41:24] And the doctors weren't giving me the information. They were testing his brain. They're like, “I know what it is. He's got Tourette’s syndrome.” I'm like, “Great, you put a name on, you put a diagnosis on it. Well, what does diagnosis mean? Di means two people, agnosis means not knowing. Two people, the doctor and the patient don't know what the hell is going on. Let's stop diagnosing and let's start finding the cause.” So, I'll see brain fog, I'll see thyroid issues, whether that's autoimmune disease. If it's in the thyroid, it's Hashimoto. If it's in the brain, it's MS. If it's in the hands, it's rheumatoid arthritis. If it's in the gut, it's celiac disease. So, we can all have the pregenetic disposition to get that specific one. I have it for mold. My haplotype for mold is 17-2-52. I have the genetics. So, if I go into a water-damaged building, of course I moved to Naples, Florida, the mold capital of the world. God brought me here for a reason though. But if I had the genetics, it doesn't mean I'm doing for the rest of my life.
[00:42:20] If you have celiac and you have the genetics, it doesn't mean that is you're sentenced for the rest of your life. It's all reversible. So, if we see autoimmune disease, that tells me you have a significant gut imbalance. There's two things that happen after the genetic predisposition. You have to have dysbiosis and leaky gut, which you talked about, you mentioned and we talked about already. All dysbiosis means is that look at your gut like a garden. You have a lot more weeds than you have flowers. And the weeds are overtaken and that's bad, that's dysbiosis, that's not good. And when weeds overtake your garden, they eat their way through your gut wall. And now they start to go to other yards, and that's your body.
[00:42:56] And then the third thing is that there has to be an environmental trigger. And that's a very short list. We talked about food sensitivities. We talked about toxins. That could be gluten, that could be sugar. It could be artificial sweeteners, it could be alcohol, it could be pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, glyphosate. And then it could be a stealth infection like bacterial or parasite or virus. So that's the short list. So, when those things go through, they attack. Then you will see autoimmune disease. You're going to see brain fog, you're going to see anxiety, you're going to see depression, you're going to see skin issues. I don't care if it's acne, psoriasis, dermatitis, rosacea, eczema, no matter again, what name they call it. It's not a skin problem. It's a gut problem. 100% gut issue. You got to go to the gut.
[00:43:42] If you're having reproductive issues, PCOS, you're having fertility problems, please, please, please check the gut. Because you can't start manipulating hormones if your gut is so inflamed and that's manipulating the hormones. You got to get the body back into some more regulation, get your immune system free of that dysregulation and start to get things more imbalanced. So now when you test the hormones, not through blood, which is worthless, through saliva. Saliva testing is the way that you should be doing it, now, we're going to get an accurate picture of what your hormones are truly telling us.
[00:44:13] So again, those are like the big things that I see, which I always tie back. And there might be some other stuff that we have to address. This is not 100% a gut issue, but I do know that the gut is a major player in all of these different conditions.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:44:25] Now, I mean, you started the conversation around all things reside in the gut. And I do agree with that wholeheartedly. One thing that I see in women and I don't know if you see this in your male patients as well, but the role of trauma impacting autoimmunity, impacting gut health over and over and over again. And if we look at the research, if we look at adverse childhood events, we know that it primes individuals for more likely to have metabolic disease, more likely to deal with weight loss resistance, more likely to develop autoimmunity, more likely to have issues with substance abuse. It doesn't mean every single person, but it really speaks to that long-term cortisol dysregulation, like chronic stress and the net impact it has on the gut. It's oftentimes not talked about enough.
[00:45:13] I think for so many of us that are very high functioning, one of the ways that we move through our childhood experiences was just being an overachiever. It's like, “Okay, if I achieve, achieve, achieve, then I don't have any negative attention coming my way.” But you kind of get in this mindset of subjugating your emotions, subjugating what you're experiencing. And so, I love that you're kind of tying all this up together for the community. But are you seeing much in the way of if patients are disclosing to you, like, “Oh, I had an abusive parent or, you know, I had a loved one who committed suicide,” and then later on they're developing autoimmune conditions, gut health issues?
Dr. Daryl Gioffre: [00:45:53] Yeah. Oh, gosh. This is probably the biggest thing you said today. It's the biggest topic there is because stress outweighed anything you can eat or drink a million times to one in terms of what it does to the body. And it's like the three T's, it's thoughts, traumas, and toxins, and they all kind of tie in together. And when you think about it from a gut standpoint, it's like I use the analogy when I moved to Florida about three years ago, three months after we moved here, Hurricane Ian came. It was one of the biggest hurricanes in Florida history. And when a hurricane hits, it's not the time to remodel your kitchen. It's like you're going to stay and you're going to fight that hurricane. You're going to blur up the windows. You're going to protect the house. You're going to run from that hurricane. You're going to get in your car and you're going to get out, or you're going to do the third act, which is freeze like a deer in headlights [unintelligible 00:46:36]. Because you are stuck in this period of fight or flight. So, fight or flight is the big problem. But here's the bigger problem, which is over 95% of us are trapped in this vicious cycle of fight or flight.
[00:46:48] We all know that if a T-Rex is chasing me down for lunch, like I'm going to be in fight or flight, I'm going to run like heck and I'm going to escape If I can. Climb up that tree so T-Rex can't eat me. Then I can calm down. My vagus nerve can help me get back into parasympathetic mode. Everything is good, but the problem is that we are marinating in our cortisol. We are under constant chronic physical, chemical, and emotional stress. The biggest one, 24/7. And the brain, as brilliant as it is, it's primitive. It can't distinguish between a physical threat like T-Rex eating me for lunch and the emotional trauma of the Instagram pinging my phone every two seconds or argument with a boss or a spouse or sitting in traffic or whatever that might be.
[00:47:30] When I say we're more toxic than we've ever been in human history, I'm talking about the bombardment of stimulus to our system. And what happens is that just like the hurricane, we're not going to remodel the kitchen. When you're trapped in that vicious cycle of fight or flight, your body doesn't care about your digestive system. It doesn't care about your immune system. It shuts down your digestive system. There is no hydrochloric acid. It just focuses on one thing, getting you out of danger. And when that happens, you can't digest your food. So, it just sets up this vicious cycle. We can't digest. Even when you think you're doing all the right things, and this is the biggest line I get all the time, Cynthia, is people come to me, they're like, “Dr. Daryl, I'm doing all the right things, I'm eating all the foods you say, the strength eating diet and taking like the big five supplements, I'm exercising, heck, I'm meditating and I still feel awful. My gut is a mess. What's going on?” This is the missing component.
[00:48:25] And it's those old traumas that basically are hidden deep down in our system, in our limbic system that we have to face. And this is why I'm such a big fan of prayer and meditation. Meditation, Dr. Joe Dispenza is amazing because it helps with coherence of the brain. HeartMath Technology is amazing. Dear friend, Dr. Patrick Porter and BrainTap. I do BrainTap every morning because it's all about making sure that your brain-- It's like if you had a room of people and there were 500 instruments there, and like none of them know what's going on. They all start playing their instruments, like that is not coherence. But all of a sudden, there's a conductor and they start playing like a beautiful symphony, that's coherence. That's what meditation does. And I'm going to tell you that the two big things that when my--
[00:49:05] When I find that I'm out of balance, off purpose in my life and I'm not doing the right things, two things are missing, meditation and exercise. So yes, start with one thing, like start with the green juice. I call it the core of a strength eating diet. That kind of led me to getting over my sugar addiction in 21 days. It's the most powerful thing you can give your gut and your body because again, it kind of bypasses the gut. You don't really have to digest it the way you would leafy greens. So, I love green juice. That's a powerful way to start. I love bouncing on a rebounder. That's like amazing for your lymphatic system. Meditation, there's something about that and what it does to just your entire psychology. And if your psychology is right when you start your day, all the choices you make from that point forward are going to better choices. At the end of the day, the quality of your life, the quality of your energy, the quality of your microbiome comes down to the quality of your choices and your longevity, of course as well.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:49:59] Well, I can't think of a better way to kind of wrap up the conversation. And thank you for the reaffirmation about meditation. This is something that I'm very transparent with listeners. I do a lot of the right things every day. Meditation is something that is a practice. There are some days I can do it really well and some days my mind is all over the place and I have to really keep myself centered. Please let listeners know how to connect with you, how to learn more about your work, get access to your supplements and your books.
Dr. Daryl Gioffre: [00:50:29] And I just want to say that is okay if that is you out there, because that was me, I'm like the monkey mind. Racing a million miles per hour. But it's all about getting off the bleachers and getting onto the field. If you're on the field, you're playing in the game and you're going to start to make changes. I don't care if you have 10 minutes of meditation once a day, but you do it every day. It's about the stacking effect. So, think about small positive changes one day at a time and getting over time, that big geometric change that will happen and it will happen. I promise everybody. So anyway, thank you so much for having me on. You can find me at getoffyouracid.com, A-C-I-D dotcom you can find me on Instagram. @Getoffyouracid is kind of the supplement side of the brand, But @drdarylgioffre, D-R-D-A-R-Y-L-G-I-O-F-F-R-E is where I do a lot of talking about all the stuff we're talking about today. And yes, we have a supplement the side of the brand and we have the virtual coaching where we send our patients out kits to do microbiome testing. Yes, that's where you can find me.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:51:26] I love it. Thank you again for your time today.
Dr. Daryl Gioffre: [00:51:28] Thank you, Cynthia. Appreciate it.
Cynthia Thurlow: [00:51:33] If you love this podcast episode, please leave a rating and review. Subscribe and tell a friend.
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