The Missing Pieces to Healing Your Gut with Margaret Floyd Barry, MRWP - #118

The Missing Pieces to Healing Your Gut with Margaret Floyd Barry, MRWP

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Hey everybody, welcome back to the EnergyMD podcast where we help you resolve your chronic fatigue, ME-CFS, MCAS and long COVID so that you can live the life that you deserve. So really excited about today because we're gonna be speaking with my good friend, Margaret Floyd Barry. And let's learn a little bit about her before we dive in. We're gonna be talking about some of the challenges you might be having with healing your gut. So if you are having challenges healing your gut, you're gonna wanna pay attention to all the things we're talking about today.

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So Margaret Floyd Barry is a functional nutritionist, writer, speaker, and educator in functional nutrition. Having seen family members suffer the devastating effects of chronic illness from a young age, helping others find a better way back to optimal health has been her passion. Through years of experience creating life-changing results with the most complex client cases, including reversing her own autoimmune condition, Margaret uses a powerful system for restoring health by addressing the root cause of illness.

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Today, Margaret teaches fellow practitioner the same proven system she uses through Restorative Wellness Solutions, a two-year comprehensive functional nutrition certification program for qualified health professionals. With over 1200 alumni in 22 plus countries, Margaret and the RWS team are actively working to change the way health is delivered. Margaret is also the author of Eat Naked, Unprocessed, Unpolluted, and Undressed, Eating for a Healthier, Sexier You.

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and the Naked Foods Cookbook. Margaret, thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you so much for having me here. I'm super excited to chat. Me too. So let's just kind of dive in here and let's talk about healing the gut. I guess we'll start off with some definitions. So, you know, oftentimes people are thinking about healing their gut. Can we kind of talk about the gut?

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And maybe we talk about first about like what normal function is for the gut. Yeah. I think, you know, the gut and digestive health to me is, it's something that in some ways, you know, what everyone talks about, Oh, we're going to heal the gut, heal the gut. But if you really think about it, it is quite a profound moment in our physiology because it's within our digestive tract that the outside world literally becomes us.

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Right. That is a big deal. Um, and so, you know, this digestive process where we have, you know, the combination of the mechanical breakdown of the food we eat, the chemical breakdown of the food we eat, you know, getting to, you know, this, this really powerful moment in the small intestine where, um, those nutrients get absorbed right into the bloodstream and get shuttled around the, our bodies.

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to yes, as fuel, but even more importantly, to heal, to become part of our immune system, to rebuild. I mean, there's literally, if you look at your hand, every single cell from the skin, the nails, any hair, muscles, bones, blood, all of that was once food, right? And the process whereby we take this outside thing and it becomes us is our digestive process. So.

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Yeah, it's kind of a big deal. Mm-hmm. It's really profound. And if we consider the fact that the vast majority of our immune system, 80%, 85%, depending on who you talk to and what resource you check, lives in and around the digestive system or the digestive tract, it has a really profound impact far beyond even just the fact that it's

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helps make us us. So I believe that digestive healing and this digestive process is absolutely foundational regardless of whether you have overt digestive symptoms or not. It is something that if we are not considering it as part of that healing process, we're just not gonna be able to cross that finish line and stay there.

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And so what sort of symptoms would alert somebody that they have a gut issue, a gut health issue? Well, if we're thinking symptoms, you know, starting at the top and working south, you know, anything that is causing discomfort when you eat. So that could be heartburn, indigestion, excessive belching and burping after meals. It could be an excessive sense of fullness in your stomach or pain in your stomach after eating.

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It can be dysregulated bowels. So either not having at least a daily bowel movement or having, you know, really loose uncomfortable watery stools or going back and forth between the two. It can be really uncomfortable bloating, distension of the gut. You know, really if there's any kind of discomfort anywhere along the line, then that is definitely a symptom, a direct digestive symptom.

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You know, even something like excess flatulence, you know, we'll all laugh about it. And yes, farting is funny, but you know, too much, and it's normal to pass gas, but you know, too much of it to, I always ask clients, you know, when you pass gas, is it just like, you know, a little stinky or do you like clear out the room? You know, like there's, that's another sign that like something is awry. So, you know, these are the overt digestive symptoms, but there can be actually indirect symptoms that can be connected to the gut very significantly, things that you might not think about, like skin issues.

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joint pain, headaches, migraines, you know, any, a lot of these sort of chronic health issues have as their origin, or at least a part of that clinical picture, digestive health. So anything dealing with the immune system. So if we're thinking about allergies, asthma, any kind of autoimmunity, we're definitely thinking about the gut.

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anything neurological because the gut and the brain have such an intimate connection. So, you know, if you've got brain fog or deep fatigue, or sort of cognitive issues, memory issues, you know, if there's been, you know, TBI is any kind of concussions, that's going to have a direct impact on the gut.

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emotional issues, you know, somebody has any kind of mood disorder, depression, anxiety, you know, these pieces all have the digestive as a component, the digestive piece as a component, it is not always the only thing I really need to emphasize that I think there's some people who believe that, you know, we heal the gut, we heal everything. And sometimes that happens. But sometimes, but it's almost always a piece of the Bherger clinical puzzle.

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It's not always the only piece. So I think that's an important distinction, but really you got anything in any of those categories. And those are some pretty darn big categories and we wanna be thinking about the digestive health. Yeah, you dropped so much gold in that comment just then. And I just wanna highlight a couple of those things. Because 80% or so of the immune system is in the gut, pretty much anything.

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And since the immune system causes inflammation, any symptom that you have, which really is inflammation in a particular area, can be caused by an issue in the gut. So I think that oftentimes people don't realize that. So I'm glad that you mentioned that. And you talked about mood disorders as well. There's a whole separate nervous system that's in the gut, right? In the enteric nervous system. And it produces more serotonin than the brain does. And so a lot of people don't realize that when they're taking their SSRI or their...

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they're antidepressant that oftentimes it's working on the serotonin that's in the gut, right? 100%, 100%. We have to be considering these two pieces and it works both ways. There's some fascinating research that's been done showing that dysregulated sleep impacts the microbiome. And then we're seeing changes in the bacteria due to dysregulated sleep. And then of course, a dysbiotic microbiome in the gut can actually influence.

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um, you know our sleep pattern so these things it's such a two-way street, you know, I know some people will even describe Um, you know kuran krishnan with microbiome labs He will talk about the the brain and the gut is actually two parts of the same system Not even we think of them as totally separate And he would describe them as actually two ends of the same stick that we always need to be considering together there's always this Bidirectional conversation going on which is you know again this stuff is I find it

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amazing, profound and fascinating and exciting. Well, and that's also the challenge with compartmentalizing different health diagnoses, right? So we've got cardiologists and we've got immunologists and we have pulmonologists and all these different ologists, but the reality is that all these systems really are talking to each other and we really need that integration. 100%. So great, so let's.

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jump into, I want to talk about, you know, kind of what are some basic ways to start to heal the gut now that people know that like any symptom that they could have could be potentially due to the gut. And, you know, starting with the gut is always a great place. And you commented on a video that I recently did on YouTube that was about when you can't heal your gut. And so that we're going to kind of go into some of those more complex issues, but let's start off with, you know, what's the first step for healing the gut? Absolutely. So

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five key areas I think you want to consider when you're thinking about digestive health. The first is digestive function. So do you have enough digestive fire to actually break down the food that you are consuming? So here we're thinking about things like enzyme production, hydrochloric acid production, and the stomach biliary flow, just some of those basic digestive functional components.

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Is there enough? And there's testing that you can do for this. And some of the stuff you can do a little bit trial and error in terms of bringing in some supplements. I am a big fan of testing because we get kind of heart rate to the heart of things. And I feel like you can trial and error your way into a lot of spending without getting results. But this is taking some digestive enzymes can be a really good beginning strategy. So digestive function is number one.

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The second piece is we want to think about the microbiome. And so we want to have a nice, diverse, robust microbiome. And as part of this, but separate from this, we want to make sure that there are no opportunistic and or pathogenic species in there. So this could be a whole number of things. This could be, it could be in H. pylori overgrowth in the stomach. It could be...

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opportunistic bacterial species that aren't in and of themselves necessarily harmful, but they can crowd out some of the more beneficial species or some of those opportunistic can actually be very inflammatory and produce lipopolysaccharides at LPS, which I think of as these like really potent agents of inflammation that if they get into the system can really do quite a lot of damage. So you know, it can be a fungal overgrowth. It can be parasites. You know, some of these things might not be.

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pathology per se, you know, like your typical test run by a conventional MD might not pick up these things, but that doesn't mean that they're not there and it doesn't mean that they're not doing harm and creating symptoms and creating a digestive challenge. So we want to be thinking about digestive function. We want to have a nice, healthy, robust microbiome and we want to make sure there aren't any opportunists overgrowing and taking over.

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We also want to make sure that the integrity of that gut lining is preserved. So I talked about the small intestine and that moment where the outside world becomes us. Well, you know, really the digestive tract is actually still the outside of the body. You know, I always say we're basically one very complicated donut and the donut hole is our digestive tract. And so that's the small intestine, you know, this big long tube, which the lining of which is

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one cell thick. That is not very thick, one cell thick, right? And it is, you know, it's basically structurally, it's all these little cells, we call them the tight junctions, these little cells that line up right next to each other, kind of like bricks in a wall. You know, if they become compromised, either those, you know, those tight junctions are designed to very selectively open up and let a nutrient in and then close back up. It's, you know, it's like having really highly trained

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know, bouncers at each door, you know, letting you know, very careful about what gets in. So as not to allow things like I mean, you know, remember what else is in that digestive tract, right, like you poop it out at the end of this experience, right. So there's toxins in there, there's pathogens, there's in maldigested foods, you know, all sorts of debris that we don't want getting directly into the bloodstream.

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So maintaining the integrity of that gut lining is really, really important. I'm sure your audience has heard of the concept of leaky gut, and that's basically when we're talking about leaky gut, we're talking about this small intestinal lining that those tight junctions have been compromised. So we wanna ensure that we heal and seal the lining of the small intestine because that leaky gut, when those tight junctions are compromised,

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you mentioned something really important, which is that, you know, compromised digestion can increase the inflammatory burden systemically in the body. And this is one of the key mechanisms for this to happen is when you're getting things that shouldn't be in the blood, you know, as I said, it could be pathogens, it could be...

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um you know it could be toxins it could be maldigested food you know it could be part of that amazing locally grown broccoli you got at the farmers market but if you don't have the day digestive capacity to break it down properly if that actually enters the bloodstream that's not recognizable to the system and now that looks like you know invader you know um you know some red alerts can go off even though it seems kind of innocuous going in it's just broccoli

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but it can actually be triggering that inflammatory response. So those pieces are really, really integral. And to that inflammatory piece, we really wanna be thinking about food sensitivities, right? We wanna be thinking about things that we could be eating that might be making their way into the bloodstream and actually triggering that inflammatory response. So.

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These are different pieces. You know, there's some, there's some ways to address this DIY style. If you're just starting out, you know, bringing in, as I mentioned, bringing in some enzymes, you know, bringing in a really good probiotic to help balance out that gut. I wouldn't recommend going on big eradication protocols without testing. I do feel like that's very much when you want to be working with a practitioner. Cause you don't want to, I know some folks are like, Oh, we'll do the antifungal.

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cleanse and then we'll do the parasite cleanse. And then, you know, these protocols are really hard on the system. You don't want to do them if you don't need them. And the only way to know if you need them or not is to test. But all of the other options, even bringing in some nice healing agents to heal and seal that gut lining and pulling out some of the heavy hitters, you know, the usual suspects when we're thinking of foods that can trigger inflammation, I'm thinking here of things like gluten refined, you know, processed foods, especially those refined oils, you know, for some people.

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eggs and dairy can be, that can be a good starting point. It might not be the finishing point, but it can be a good starting point. Those are some of the most common food sensitivities. We pull them out and that can relieve some of that inflammatory burden.

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So let's talk a little bit about leaky gut. So, you know, I believe, I mean, I'm working with people who are very sick, you know, ME-CFS, chronic fatigue syndrome, long COVID, stuff like that. But my assumption at this point in time is that everybody on the planet has leaky gut because of the toxins that we're exposed to. What do you think? You agree or disagree? Completely agree. In fact, we don't even test for that. You know, there's a different, depending on which lab people are using, there's often.

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Sometimes there's markers for leaky gut. Sometimes you can add them on and we don't even, I mean, we're just like, well, there's so many different ways of assessing this. We just assume it's so common. And for all of the reasons, the incredible toxic burden that we are all under, foods that people are eating. I mean, it's just so hard. I don't know that we can be pristine in this highly toxic world. And that's it.

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It's a little daunting and depressing, but that's just the reality of what we live in. So I would highly agree. So let's talk a little bit about food sensitivities versus allergies versus food allergies. Can you give us the distinction? Yeah, yeah. I think of this in three categories of adverse reactions to food that, ultimately all of them were having,

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an adverse reaction, meaning it's triggering some kind of symptom for us. Understanding the mechanisms can be helpful in identifying which ones they are. So food allergies are, you know, it's an immune mediated response and it's mediated by these immunoglobulins, the immunoglobulin E. And, you know, I don't feel like testing is, especially in adults, most of us know, the thing with food allergies is they're not subtle.

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Right? Like you eat the food, have the response. It's not something where you eat the food and maybe several days later you have a response. Like it tends to be very immediate and it tends to, the response tends to, not always, but it tends to get louder with every exposure. So most people, you know, for example, with a peanut allergy aren't wondering if they have a peanut allergy. No, testing can be super helpful for kids who aren't as tuned into their bodies, but for adults, you know, for most of us, we know that.

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Another type of adverse reaction is a food intolerance. And this also gets confused with food sensitivities all the time. A food intolerance is the lack of digestive capacity to break down a given food. Classic example of this is the lactose intolerance. Once again, not difficult to figure out. I really don't know many people who have a lactose intolerance who don't know that, partly because you, you know.

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you eat the ice cream and then within some, for some people minutes, for many people hours, there is a significant response. So pretty quickly we're able to identify, oh, I ate this food and here's what happened. The challenge with food sensitivities, which this third category, it is immune mediated, sometimes with antibodies, sometimes it just happens in the cell. And the challenge with it is that it can be delayed.

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So you can have these delayed reactions. So here we are, we're having this conversation on a Wednesday. I could eat something today and have the reaction on Friday or even Saturday. How on earth am I gonna figure out if I've got a headache on Friday that it actually has something to do with what I ate today? Like it's just, it's almost impossible. And this is one of the reasons why elimination diets can be so persnickety because there's so many different ways you can react to a food. It also...

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There are different degrees of reactivity. So you might not have a huge reaction to a bunch of foods, but you might end up, you know, just by accident eating a handful of foods to all of which you have a moderate reaction. But when you eat them all together in concert, now you have a more significant response. And these food sensitivities can be a really sneaky source of chronic inflammation.

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You know, if we're eating things that we think of as healthy, you know, I'll give an example like turmeric. I cannot tell you how many clients have come to me, just, you know, the turmeric lattes, the turmeric this, the turmeric that, because we, you know, they've heard that, you know, that their curcumin and turmeric is, you know, anti-inflammatory, which it absolutely can be and is for many people.

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And if you have developed a food sensitivity to that, it can actually be having the exact opposite impact in your specific body at this moment in time. That's another important piece of this puzzle is food sensitivities shift. So they can be a little bit difficult. You know, I always say, I remember back in the day, long before I became a practitioner and before I even considered becoming a practitioner, my first major experience with

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the healing power of food and the gut and removing food sensitivities was I had a horrible eczema head to toe. And after years and years of being prescribed increasing doses of cortisone cream, got to the point where I had it on my eyelids and the doctor was recommending I put cortisone cream on my eyelids. And I was not a medical professional, but there was just something about that that seemed wrong. Like I just felt like we're now, that's too close to my eyes. I just sort of imagined my eyelids burning off. I'm...

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that wouldn't have happened, but it was just like, okay, this isn't working. So this is when I went to a functional practitioner and we did all this testing. Now, I don't know if she didn't tell me or if she or if I just didn't hear it. Either of those possible are possible, but I did not realize that this diet where she identified all these foods, which was of course, all of my favorite foods, I was not able to eat.

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I didn't realize that was a temporary thing. So I just went home and cried and thought, like, you have to be kidding me if this is the rest of my life. It wasn't the rest of my life. So I just wanna say that out there when we're working with food sensitivities and healing the gut concurrently, which I believe is very, very important. I don't believe in just identifying food sensitivities and pulling them out and then going on the merry way. Like you have to do, it's part of the gut healing process.

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But yeah, you can reintroduce the vast majority of those. We're not here in the business of trying to make your life hard and restricted. We're in the business of helping you get well and, you know, eat as big a variety of foods as vast a variety of foods as possible. So, and just a side note, yes, that eczema went away completely within three weeks, has never come back. And that was my sort of, oh, as I didn't, I couldn't fathom that anything that I ate, I would have anything to do with this skin thing. But there you go.

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but, and I eat all of those foods that I had pulled out at that point now, and it doesn't come back. So this is about identifying those foods that are triggering that inflammatory process and removing them temporarily while we heal the gut. And the gut healing can involve those five pieces that I just talked about.

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It also might be much more complex as you just alluded to. It might be that we need to really do some deeper digging and removing toxic burden, and just these environmental assaults that can keep us in such a compromised place. Yeah, so that's a really important point for people who are listening and watching this. So if you have done the things that Margaret just talked about in terms of

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healing the gut and you're still struggling. Oftentimes it can be something underlying it that's causing either a neuropathy like a gastroparesis that's happening in the gut that's not allowing the gut to function properly or there's inflammation from toxins like heavy metals, chemicals, molds, infections, and even trauma or nervous system dysfunction can play a role in that too. That's like the deeper dive, I call those the toxic five.

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you know, just make sure that, you know, cause a lot of people that I see when you've got ME, CFS and long COVID is that you've been working on your gut sometimes for many years and you feel like you've done everything to heal your gut and you're not having success. And it's because of these other things that are at play. So thank you, Margaret's the first so much for explaining that to us. So a couple things about, um, about the food allergy. So I struggle with, um,

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with those terms personally, allergy versus sensitivity versus intolerance. And I think, and I totally get the lactose analogy and I think that it's a good one, except the fact that I do wonder how many of those people are actually reacting to casein, to the protein in dairy, versus the lactose or the sugar that's in dairy. And so in the protein generally is gonna cause more of a food sensitivity. I do think that...

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I do think that any sort of immune system reaction to a food can be anywhere on the spectrum from a sensitivity to an allergy or like an anaphylactic reaction, I guess, which is kind of like what we're causing an allergy. But I kind of just wanted to put it out there because I make this mistake all the time. And so if people see me talking about like food allergies, I'm probably talking about food sensitivities. So I appreciate that you're making that clarification. That's really helpful.

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I want to actually comment on that because I think your point is really important. If the food is causing a risk, like an adverse response, it kind of doesn't matter the mechanism. We want to take it out. The reason for understanding mechanisms is that if you have taken out the ones that are obvious and are still not getting, like there's still a sort of a source of inflammation. It's the testing is identifying those food sensitivities.

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that can be delayed where understanding the language in that understanding the mechanism of it in that understanding what kind of tests will help you identify those foods so that you can remove them temporarily. So for me, that's the utility of clarifying because the whole point is that you know sort of mechanism aside if something is if you eat it and it's causing an adverse response then 100 we want to be taking that out and doing and healing the underlying mechanism so

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you can start eating that again. And in some cases, it's just really hard to identify. So that's where knowing what you're testing for can be really helpful. Cause I've seen people spend a whole lot of money on really expensive tests that are not actually giving them the information that they need. So that's, I think that then we can, we can talk about testing if you like, but I think that's a, that's a really, that's an important clarification. Yeah. And I consider the, the food elimination diet as the gold standard.

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where you're eliminating the top 10 food antigens and then for three weeks, and then you're adding back in one food every four days or so, so that you can kind of watch that reaction as you talked about that delay. And so that's the oral food reintroduction or whatever you wanna call it. What do you think? Do you think that's the gold standard? Do you prefer the testing? How do you navigate them? So here's the situation with that. If you're gonna do an elimination diet, the way that you have just described it is exactly how I would go about doing it.

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What I have seen in practice is that sometimes and oftentimes people are having an inflammatory response to things beyond those 10 foods. So it could be really seemingly innocuous things, lettuce, avocado, chicken, just like random things that in our experience, when we do, as I do a lot of gut testing in my practice, and if I...

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don't do, I work with a very specific food sensitivity test and it's not an antibody test. I work with one that is an end point test that's looking for, is this food triggering the inflammatory response? It takes kind of a mechanism question out of the picture which is helpful, because I don't, again, I kind of don't care about the mechanism. I really just wanna know about whether it's, if it's triggering that inflammatory response or not. So one of the things that I've found is that

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Oftentimes there are foods that we just wouldn't have figured out as a result of doing that elimination. And so if someone has done the elimination process that you've gone through and their symptoms have resolved, fantastic. You know what I mean? Like then there's no need to go any further. And just in our process, what I see quite a bit is that that hasn't. I mean, most of those people aren't the ones ending up in my office. Most of the people who have done an elimination diet are doing fine and they're not here.

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but the ones that end up in my office have, you know, I'm sure much like the ones that end up in your office have been to like multiple practitioners. They've been trying to do, you know, the healing, they have been, you know, unsuccessful and they're feeling super sick and super frustrated and often not heard and all of those kinds of things. And so by bringing in this test to identify those foods that are in a inflammatory alongside the gut healing, I find that we get some pretty amazing results. Now,

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Some of the, we don't have as much crossover in our client population. So I'm not working necessarily with people with long COVID. For example, my specialty has been autoimmune. Little bit of overlap there, but I would say, maybe two or three cases of people with long COVID. Mostly it's, we're talking Hashimoto's and is one of the main ones, but multiple different types of autoimmune. So this process that I'm describing has been extremely effective with.

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that in particular. So it could also be a little bit different client populations. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah. And I think that, you know, oftentimes people who are listening to this, who have chronic fatigue syndrome or long COVID, and they're exhausted all the time, they don't necessarily have the energy to do a food elimination diet or stuff like that too. So when people come into my, and oftentimes they've done it before they come to see me, right. And they haven't, they've had maybe some success.

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but not all the way. And it's because of these toxic five that are still present. And so, you know, I'm always trying to navigate that and negotiate. And so I'll usually tell people just be gluten-free, dairy-free and sugar-free and, you know, eat as natural as you can meat and vegetables. And that's good enough for now, just because we've got other fish to fry and foods are one of the 38 different causes that we're kind of looking at. So...

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You know, you kind of have to take that into account. Now, when I was doing my brick and mortar functional medicine practice, I had everybody do a food elimination diet before they walked in the door. And 80 percent of their symptoms had resolved, you know, when I saw them for the first appointment, you know, because of how, you know, how much immune system we have in the gut and how inflammatory so many of these foods can be. So I'm curious. I want to come back to the testing a little bit.

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because the joke that I've heard that we kind of used to throw around the office was that the testing was about 50% accurate and we didn't know which 50% because sometimes it would have like weird things like lettuce and some of that. And then it becomes unsustainable for people where they're like, I can't eat anything. And then we're just gonna focus on the toxic five anyway. So tell me, it sounds like your experience has been a lot better with testing probably because of different population, but tell me a little bit.

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I guess a little bit more about that. Yeah, 100%. Well, the diet definitely can get weird for a little while, but remember, it's not a long-term thing. We're doing this for three months, about three to four months. And I've never, I've had a couple of cases where the food list is so comprehensive, it's almost untenable, but the vast majority of the time, it's been actually really interesting where someone will be like, you know what?

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it just never sits well. Like lettuce just doesn't sit well. I mean, I force myself to eat it because it's like this thing we're supposed to have salad, but I don't like it. And it's like, it's almost like they are the body. It confirms some of these instincts that they already had. Another application actually is when you have, and I'm sure you have these people come to you who have narrowed their diet down to like eight or nine foods and they're scared to eat anything. And we actually will use the food sensitivity testing in reverse to give us, to give the client comfort.

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to show almost proof that these foods are not triggering reactivity and this is going to be where we start to expand the diet. So those foods that are the least reactive are the places that we start and we actually use it as a tool to expand the diet rather than further restrict the diet. And I will say another piece when working with tests is that I have found just from a simple client compliance situation.

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is when it's sort of written down on a piece of paper that came from a lab, that can be much more compelling for people than something that is more, let's say, generic, right? That they will trust something that's come from a lab and feel like, okay, here it is, we're gonna tuck in and we're gonna do this for the next few months. And I've just seen client compliance go up significantly as well.

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Um, so, you know, it's, it's, I've never very rarely have I seen it be such a complicated list where it really isn't anything that they're able to eat. Um, and what's one of, one of the things that we actually will very proactively do. Is work with them to meal plan and to come up with lots of options. We're really all about focusing on the foods that are really healing for their bodies and focusing less on what they're not eating, but really focusing on how can we get really creative with the foods that you are eating so that you don't even really notice.

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the fact that you're not eating these other things. So creative meal planning is really helpful. And it's interesting, some of the foods, we do a slow reintroduction, very similar to what you do with your elimination diet at the end of the months of we've been doing gut healing alongside this, as I said. And when we're reintroducing foods, it's been really interesting. Sometimes there are foods that seem so innocuous that-

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clients just don't react well to. And so we identify that like there's one or two sort of weird things that they just their body just as hard. No, like the other day, one of the clients, what was it? It was like, was it like cucumber or black pepper? Something very common and very like we sort of, oh no, it was parsley. It was parsley. We kind of laughed about it. It was first of all, like who eats the parsley at the side of the plate. But then it.

34:57

you know, when he tried to reintroduce it, he's like, yeah, my body hates parsley. It's like, you know, just hardcore reactions. So like, who knew parsley seems so innocuous. So that's the kind of, that's, that's the value that I find. And I also have a lot of clients who come in who have, are on something like the autoimmune paleo diet or gaps diet, these very, very restrictive diets where they've eliminated a whole bunch of foods that they could be eating while they might still be eating some foods that are still triggering that inflammation. So it can help again, it can be used.

35:27

to identify what needs to be removed, but also it can in certain situations be used to identify what they can actually start eating again. That's helpful. And which is that test that you like? So one we like is the MRT, the Pediatric Response Testing. And I know there's some people who love it and there's some people who hate it. We use it, as I said, I would never use it on its own, always in combination with stool testing. Yeah, and I really like the fact that it

35:57

it looks at inflammation. There's thousands of different molecules in the immune system. And to look at just one subset of the immune system versus overall inflammation, I think, is you're missing the forest for the trees. I think that's definitely a superior test. Couple of other comments I wanted to make on that, chat GPT and AI now can be really helpful for meal planning. So I actually, I created my own GPT and chat GPT to have like,

36:26

my cooking assistant. I'm not a good chef. And so I've been asked by my family to step up because my wife's working more now or whatever. And so I've been enjoying my time in the kitchen and I walk around and I tell my cooking assistant what I have in the fridge, what I have in the pantry. And I can say, you know, make it in a Mexican theme with Mexican spices or Asian or something like that. And it'll come up with, you know,

36:53

gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, whatever else I'm restricting free, and can create some more variety. So I definitely encourage people to use that as a resource. That's it. I love that. I love it. And you can, and actually if you, you can now actually take a picture of your fridge and you can say, make me a meal using these things. And so it can see what's in your fridge and then it can give you a recipe based off of that too. So that's pretty awesome.

37:21

And then a question that I had, so when I had cystic acne, for me, I used to get like big cysts in my ears, of which sometimes they had to get cut out and big cysts on my back. And for me, it was dairy that I had to remove and then it all went away. What was it for you with your eczema or was it a combination of those foods? I was a combination of so many different things. There was definitely a fungal component. And then, gosh, I'm trying to remember the list.

37:49

I went in, you know, like joking, oh, they're gonna take away my favorite food groups, chocolate, coffee, wine, and pasta. And if, you know, then I came out going, oh, if it was only that. Yeah, there was no, it was a lot of, this was a long time ago now, so I was in my twenties, which I'm not anymore.

38:10

There wasn't one thing that, I mean, I actually reintroduced absolutely everything, you know, even gluten at the time. Now I had, I later on developed Hashimoto's and did kick gluten to the curb completely. But actually at this point, gluten is really the only thing that I just have, that I have a very strong reaction to. And that I just, I just don't even mess with it, but I will eat. I mean,

38:33

I don't do, am I out there eating like ho-hos and McDonald's? Absolutely not, right? I'm not eating junk food, but in terms of like real whole foods, I eat pretty much everything. Nice. Well, and I mean, and gluten's an interesting one too, because when we first met gluten 10,000 years ago, it was a seven chromosome organism, and now it's like 49 chromosomes or whatever. So it's, if we were 115 chromosomes as a human, we would look very different, right? And so,

39:01

We, you know, I think I tell people it's like eating a sock because it's so foreign to us as humans. Like it may look like food and it may taste really good, but you know, the body doesn't think it's food. Is that safe to say? Definitely. Yeah, there's just, there's so many different ways the body reacts to gluten. I just can't, you know, I will have people say, well, when, when will you recommend gluten? And I just, I just, I can't, I just can't. It's, I can't.

39:30

know, it's up to them to make the decision if they're going to, but they're never going to hear me to say, you should eat this. That just, that just won't come out of my mouth. Right. Yeah. And sometimes it's, uh, you're better off in other parts of the world, you know, but unfortunately GMO has kind of influenced, they used to be, you know, majority here, um, genetically modified stuff and spraying and whatnot. And now it's starting to feed into different parts of the world. So that might be less of an issue or less of a

39:57

of a possibility moving forward, unfortunately. I know that when we were in India back in 2007, we could eat the chapattis, which were wheat and gluten. And we didn't have an issue. And my wife is very allergic to wheat. And then when we were in Germany just a year ago, there were certain things that we could consume without an issue. But I don't know how long that's gonna be possible for the future. And with glyphosate as well, of course, that's a huge issue.

40:27

excited, which is now much more ubiquitous in Europe as well. So I agree. I think it will be interesting to see. Yeah, yeah, good point. So then in terms of healing the gut and and reversing these food allergies, so you talked about being off of them for three months, and going through like a gut healing protocol, and essentially kind of like getting the immune system to stop reacting to these foods. So can you tell us a little bit more about that?

40:57

Yeah, absolutely. So really in addressing those five pieces of the digestive system that we started off with, I am a big believer in testing. So I will use a stool test, GI map is the one we work with. There's others, there's some really good tests out there as well, but GI map is one that's sort of this nice sweet spot of affordable and also clinically really helpful to guide those protocols. So what the test is going to tell you is...

41:22

you know, what is the sort of the health and the balance of that microbiome? Are there any opportunists, whether they're bacteria, fungus, parasites, et cetera, that you need to address and remove? It'll give you a little bit of an indication in terms of the digestive function, you know, enzyme status, et cetera, but that those test results can inform the gut healing strategy.

41:49

And so we're, but we're considering always digestive function, healing and sealing that gut lining, microbiome balance, identifying and removing any pathogens and then identifying and removing any inflammatory foods. So those are kind of the five pieces that we're thinking about. And through that process, you know, you increase, and you know, you have a nice robust digestive system now, a healed and sealed.

42:13

gut lining, the microbiome is nice and diverse. That's when you can reintroduce so many of those foods. And now if you have, if the intestinal barrier is not compromised, and if you're able, if you have enough sort of digestive fire to break down the foods into their nutrient components, and you have a nice balanced microbiome without opportunists, which can cause all sorts of issues.

42:39

Um, that right there, I mean, you, most people should be able to eat most things and actually, you know, you're dramatically reducing the burden on the immune system. You are dramatically reducing the inflammatory burden. You're dramatically increasing your ability to not just the food that you eat. You're actually able to sort of harvest the nutrients and use the nutrients from it.

43:07

much more effectively than if you don't have that same robust, healthy digestive system. So there's a lot of pieces, you know, and I know that the theme of your show here is energy. Every single one of those pieces are going to impact your energy levels really directly, right? Like if you have chronic drain on the immune system, that can come from all sorts of things that you talk about, you know, in terms of environmental assaults and toxins and different pieces, but also it can be from just

43:36

poorly functioning digestive system, that's a drain on your energy, it's gonna divert resources. Also, immune system is often most active at night so it can interrupt your sleep, which can then impact your energy levels. The ability to harvest those nutrients from the diet can have a huge impact on being able to access the proper vitamins and minerals that you need for energy.

44:04

if you have a higher, the higher your inflammatory burden, the lower your energy, you know, that's another place where it can, you know, you can have elevated levels of reactive oxygen species, which can affect mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cell. I mean, there's so many ways that these pieces all interrelate. So this is part of why, you know, healing that digestive tract is just so integral to all the things. Well said. Yeah, and I think it's interesting because

44:33

I don't test as much as I used to because in working with people with chronic fatigue and long COVID, in general, because of the toxins present and the infections are more opportunistic, they end up with all of them. So they have bacteria and they have yeast and they have parasites, they have viruses, they have spirochetes. And so I test less because I'm just going to address all those things anyway, because I want to make sure I leave no stone unturned. But that doesn't make sense for people who don't have chronic fatigue and long COVID.

45:03

So I appreciate it's really important what you're saying here for the everyday person who has symptoms. I wanna comment on that. That's actually our cue as well as if we're doing gut testing and it comes back loaded, right? With all of the things, that's a really good sign that actually there's something deeper that we need to look at.

45:26

Or the reverse of that, you have someone who just feels like garbage can hardly get themselves out of bed and you do a test and it comes back perfectly clean. It's like, those two scenarios are ones where it's often, if you have started with gut testing and those things come about, that's actually an indication that some of these, there's that extra burden that is gonna prevent you from healing the gut no matter how amazing the protocol and how many inflammatory foods you've pulled out. So I think that's a, yeah.

45:56

kind of works both those ways. Yeah, very wise. So we've just got a couple minutes left. I so appreciate all the information you've shared today. And we're going to drop links below of the different things that you offer. Tell us a little bit about where people can find you and then the programs that you offer. Because I highly recommend if somebody's interested in becoming a functional nutritionist, functional practitioner training with you would be awesome because I really love the work you're doing.

46:25

Thank you. So yeah, so I run a school called Restorative Wellness Solutions, and we train health professionals in how to do exactly what we're talking about here. Our introductory course is Mastering the Art and Science of Gastrointestinal Healing, and it's a deep dive into all the things that we're talking about here today. It's the first of four levels of curriculum. We have a course on hormones, a course on blood chemistry.

46:49

Our final course is where we do a deep dive into some of the pieces that you're talking about, where we're talking about like mycotoxin exposures, genomics, neurological considerations and autoimmune. So there's four different levels of curriculum. And I'd invite folks, so rest is our website, but we're actually doing something fun this summer called the Clinical Success Showcase, which I would love to invite your audience to. It's a free.

47:17

four day virtual events we're doing from July 29th to August 1st. And what we're doing is each day, one of our top practitioners and top members of our faculty is walking us through a real life case example of what we're talking about here. So the first day, we're going to showcase a pediatric gastrointestinal case. So we're going to be doing looking at the GI map.

47:42

looking at the MRT, seeing how this plays out and looking at it on that day, specifically in a pediatric case, we have the next day we're gonna be looking at a fertility case, again, using some of these tools in addition to some of the toxin testing that you do as well to address hormone imbalances. And then the third day of metabolic health.

48:06

case and then the last day an example of mold driven autoimmunity. So in each of these the practitioners are really just going to open up the kimono and show you their clinical thinking, their thought process, these are the tests they use, this is how they understand the results, this is how they're working with the clients.

48:23

It's really, you know, if you're wanting to get in the weeds and really understand the insides of a functional nutrition practice, this is where to go. So if you're a practitioner thinking about doing this work, definitely. And if you're a consumer and you're dealing with your own health challenge, and kind of want to understand the clinical thinking that goes on behind the scenes, it's a great example of all of that. So we'll share the links with you here to invite you to that. It's, as I said, free four-day event, and we would love to see you there. We'll definitely share those wide.

48:53

Yeah, it sounds like a wonderful event. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. This is a great conversation. You're doing such wonderful work as well. So it's an honor to be here. Thank you, Margaret. I appreciate you coming on and sharing all this wonderful knowledge with us. Thank you, anytime.