Neuroscientist Reveals How to Repair Gut Health without Probiotics - Dr. Sherr

Dr Scot sure when it comes down to gut health people don't seem to realize that the small intestine our gut actually needs fuel itself like those cells need they need they need fuel it's not necessarily coming from just carbohydrates or food that we're eating they they operate differently yep how does that work how does first off like how can a lack of proper fuel in the gut affect gut permeability gut health ultimately uh the mood like how how does work yeah so our large intestine is fueled by butyrate okay so your main source of fuel

for your large intestine is actually berate so berate is made in a lot of different ways but berate is the main fuel okay in the small intestine the main fuel is actually glutamine and what people don't realize is that the the fuel which what that means is that the the cells in your gut in your small intestine require glutamine to work to make energy to function and those cells are just one layer thick so your cellular wall your cell wall of your gut is not very thick people think it's like this massive you know when

you look at like a big tube or something like that no it's one cell thick and there's all these other things that are inside the small intestine that are like your immune cells and other types of cells that are there to help protect you the way to think about the gut is it's basically outside of your body okay our first immune system that was developed was inside of our gut the first neurons and connections and like synapses and things like that like were made in your gut because they had to understand what was happening from

the outside world okay so our gut is kind of where everything starts and Begins for most people and if your gut is not working well the whole system starts crashing because the gut is protecting you from the outside world and if you're allowing things to come into the from the outside world because you have a leaky gut because you're not getting enough maybe fuel for those cells or there's inflammation or there's infection or whatever it might be that all kind of go together um you'll find that the system starts getting disregulated because all those things

that were supposed to be kept out of your body start coming in when the gut gets leaky interesting so what are some ways like just getting right down to Brass tax that you can kind of help support that because it's not just about the food that you're eating I also put a link down below for a company that makes a C15 for people that don't eat a lot of cheese or people that want to get those c-15 levels up a lot of their research was funded by the United States Navy they have some really interesting

stuff it's a company called fatty 15 I've talked to Dr ven Watson multiple times and I've even interviewed her on this channel she is who really is one of the people that kind of started discovering this deficiency in Dolphins but this is something that's been talked about across the literature for a long time but only recently has become sort of household information I put a link down below for you to try fatty 15 if it's something that's of interest to you I think it's a very important compound it is a form of Satur fat so

it's not like we're talking anything really weird here it's a saturated fat that we would get from good quality cheeses but the amount of cheese you'd have to eat to get our levels back up and again this is a real deficiency would be a lot of cheese so that link is down below it's a 15% off discount link Top Line of the description underneath this video I highly encourage you to at least go there and read some of the literature it's fascinating well a lot of this has to do with there's so many different components

to this right so if you have a gut that's leaky it's there's so many different reasons that why might why that why that might be the case right so if your gut is not doing a good job keeping things out um and and maintaining things in the gut and then letting them go if they're not supposed to be there it's probably because um there are a number of factors all kind of related to the final issue which is inflammation in the gut and when what happens if you have a lot of inflammation is that those

cells that are aligning the gut are not getting the fuel that they need um and then they start opening up and they start to let things in and as a result of that you're starting get leaky gut and you get all these inflammatory things that happen as a result of that so and the key fuel there for our gut cells is glutamine as well and that's you a very important amino acid as you know so so okay because I know glutamine from sort of the bodybuilding world where it doesn't really do diddly squat right from

a muscle building perspective it's not essential it's not you know it's uh it's created so like why do we really need it to build muscle and I think that's been demonstrated to largely not do anything but there's this other side of glutamine that people don't always realize and I know there's the endurance side there's also just flat out just other sides in general like from the endurance perspective it's like I don't know if people realize and this isn't just for endurance athic like it's all relative right like if someone is not accustomed to doing more

cardio and all a sudden they do more cardio or they start an exercise regime and they start kind of depleting these glutamine levels this has an impact on their gut health which then has an impact on subsequent other things yes so many athletes that I've worked with over the years have their guts are trash and that's because they're depleting all of their amino acids but the one that's most important is going to be the glutamine for their gut and so they get leaky gut as a result of just being over exercised and then they're getting

diarrheal symptoms they're getting abdominal symptoms so I worked with a guy recently at the Leadville race which is like the ultramarathon in Colorado where I live and he was complaining to me like every year that he tried it two years before at least one year maybe two years where you get severe diarrheal symptoms and like this is a big problem with people doing a lot of these bigger races and they get a lot of GI distu why is this then there's lots of different reasons but one of the reasons is that they're depleting all of

their amino acids because they're doing these huge races and the main one that's keeping their gut intact is glutamine so if you're and so what we did with him with him this year was we had him take about four to five grams of glutamine every four hours and he ran the race in three hours less than he did the year before and no GI symptoms at all so it's underutilized and underappreciated the importance of glutamine maybe not from a muscle building perspective but from a gut Integrity perspective while you're trying to build muscle and get

stronger and do these ultramarathons and things like that and I think it makes sense like from a you know any kind of evolutionary perspective like people might say like well why I don't want to you know I want to do it all with food I want to do it it's pretty unnatural to go out and run a 100 miles right so me the first guy that that did the 26 miles the marathon died right so yeah so I mean yes maybe we've adapted and we're we're better at doing some of these you know extreme things

what I'm curious is how how quickly does gut damage occur like I mean if so if someone let's say you know I go out and I run 20 mil you know let's make it like more relatable let's say like someone that's doing a couch to 5K goes out and they R they run a 5k right they run they're all going to need more glutamine man yeah especially I mean and you do you need it as well when you're doing those 20 MERS and things like that we see this even the biggest place we see it

actually is in people that get surgery people that just get laid up in the hospital um they need a lot more glutamine overall to support their gut and in general they don't get enough and so we actually we've looked at various there's good studies that show that if you increase and supplement with glutamine they don't lose as much muscle mass and their gut doesn't get as leaky either and they don't get such inflammation issues as a result of that so even just a couple days in the hospital can be detrimental to your gut Integrity because

you are inflamed and then you're sitting in bed and you're like all you're you know you're losing lean body mass by just sitting there too so opposite extremes apply here so if you're doing a lot of energy metabolism a lot of work you're going to require a lot more glutamine as well not for your muscle tissue as much but for your gut and that's what people don't think about as much so often times we have people sipping glutamine postoperatively this is not in the in the conventional world but in the the more alternative side like

up to 20 grams a day in some in some people depending on the situation so so with uh so it can happen pretty quick so it's just like like if someone goes out and never run a 5k before they run it then it's I mean it's basically depleting actively yes um what happens the term leaky gut intestinal permeability is like thrown around so much uh and over I shouldn't say overhyped because I I don't think it's overhyped I think it's very important but it's over marketed right so it's like it's talked about in in the

wrong circles the wrong people where they they burnt out that that term yeah but it's a very real thing and I think you know you and I talked like when I had my Like A Parasite last year and like it was really messed me up like there was you know immune system things that happen Downstream of that there's all kinds of stuff that happen Downstream that yeah um what happens when your gut is permeable so when your gut's not doing what it's supposed to do it's allowing that outside world to come in and that's usually

going to cause significant amounts of immune system activation overall and that's usually not going to be a good idea also because it's also going to cause your brain to get leaky as well so once there's a lot of immune activation there's a lot of inflammation because all these little particles and things like that that shouldn't have come in from the gut are now in the system maybe it's too big of a protein maybe it's too big of a carbohydrate maybe it's a parasite or maybe it's something else that came in because you had more of

a leaky kind of gut then the whole system gets more inflamed and then as an inflammatory responses occur you have inflammation other or areas of the body including your brain which is what I've seen the most actually over the years is that once your gut gets leaky um your brain gets leaky and then your brain allows things to get across that weren't supposed to get there so this is when people get you know reactivations of things like Epstein bar or lime or mold that were never an issue and then all of a sudden it could

happen where you have a massive inflammatory response that causes the leaky gut itself or you can have issues within the gut itself that cause inflammation that maybe the food maybe toxins maybe medications environmental stuff that cause the gut to be leaky on its own that cause an inflammatory response in the rest of the system so it can go either way if that makes sense so U mechanistically if like exercise endurance were kind of depletes the glutamine yes how does how does stress is it working along the same pathway I mean is there is there a

physical change that occurs like through exercise that causes this depletion but compare that to someone that's like like chronically stressed and that's kind of contributing to a right so the chronic stress is a little bit different right but but it's it's similar in this in some ways because if you're chronically stressed you're activating your sympathetic nervous system your sympathetic nervous system is like your fight ORF flight it's like running from a lion kind of nervous system if that's not the place that we digest very well as you know most of people actually what what happens

when an animal is in danger it shits itself and it runs right so that it's like this massive response of like just clamping down and then going so you don't digest very well if you're in simp sympathetic overload so if you're massively stressed all the time you're not going to be able to have the rest and digest and so you're not going to able to get enough blood flow to your intestines to actually get enough digestion to happen so that's when people get bloating they don't get digestion well they get bacterial overgrowth all those kinds

of things because they're always in sympathetic response it's a different response than the stress of exercise which is just an acute stress that's depleting things like glutamine and as a result of that you're getting the leak a higher incidence of things like a leaky gut um but the chronic stress that's happening and the sympathetic dominance that you're getting you can't digest your food that way interesting and there's a I mean is that one of the reasons why people maybe don't sleep so well like I mean is I know there's an interplay between glutamine glutamate and

Gaba right because they kind of work sort of Sy or I guess in opposition SL synergistically with each other so yeah we have glutamine which is your amino acid then you have glutamate which is also amino acids but glutamine can be converted into glutamate glutamate is also our primary excitatory neurotransmitter in the brain so glutamate gets across the blood brain barrier very easily and it that's about keeping you on it's your energy it's your your focus um this is of course dop me and norrine are involved but glutamate is actually the primary that people don't

know about but then glutamate gets converted into Gaba in the brain and then glutamate requires vitamin B6 and magnesium to do that so you have to have those co-actors to be able to convert your glutamate to your Gaba in the brain and Gaba is of course really important for relaxing and calming down and helping you sleep if you have too much glutamate compared to glut compared to Gaba you're going to feel more energy you're not going to be able to sleep you're going to be irritable insomnia all those kinds of things so it's really important

that your gut's working so that your gut is getting you glutamine and it's and it's doing what it needs to do so you don't get leaky gut and inflammation this inflammation is going to screw up your neurotransmitters as well in various ways including Gaba and then but it's also important you're getting enough glutamine for the rest of the body as well not just your gut so if you have a leaky gut you need more glutamine not only for your for your small intestine but for the rest of your body especially for your conversion over to

Gaba so you can actually sleep and so if you're depleted in your gut you need more glutamine and if you have a leaky gut you need more glutamine and then if you have if you need that much more you're also going to need more so you can get into the system so you can actually convert it over to Gaba as well and this is the irbil that you have with a lot of people that have a leaky gut or that are depleted overall in Gaba is that they just don't have enough to maintain and and

help with them with their mood along with their sleep interesting yeah cuz you I mean on the surface you would think okay glutamine would be the opposite of what you would need if it's going to feed glutamate that's going to make you moreable so it's actually you need more glutamate to make enough Gaba right so it's a thing where you need enough of the precursor it's a balance between those two things right so if you don't have that balance you're going to have an overabundance of glutamate you're going to be screwed because you're not going

to be able to sleep you're going to have tremors so you have to not only make sure that you're getting enough glutamine but also the co-actors that are responsible for the conversion which is your vitamin B6 and your magnesium so that's also very important for people of course and then you know most of the foods that we eat now are depleted in a lot of those kinds of minerals especially magnesium many of us are magnesium deficient as you know as well and so I often have my patients taking magnesium at night uh along with maybe

vitamin B6 but usually I'm doing I'm checking levels for that kind of thing because you can take too much B6 as well which is not always a good thing so yeah so if you're trying to uh sort of if you have too much glutamate and actually let's back up for a second I think people can understand a little bit more like what glutamate is when they think of like MSG that's a great great example and I don't want to put MSG on the spot cuz I know that people get sensitive about their MSG but I

can honestly say in my personal experience like I don't sleep when I have MSG I am very wired and I know I'm not alone in that and I know that it's difficult to talk people do get very sensitive when you talk about their MSG and I'm not bashing MSG but it's just I didn't think it was that controversial I think I thought everybody had one guy one time put me on he was a very well-known very well-known uh food star uh from that uh what is that uh ugly delicious that show he I mean massive

following on Twitter I did a video that was talking about it wasn't even negative about MSG it was really just talking about uh a couple of the studies there's one particular study that was was literally called Chinese food syndrome like because and talked about the effects of MSG on on the brain and he just like I mean the things he called me I mean I don't even want to say them on YouTube right it was just like because just shock value because there was a a perceived attack on a particular like the Umami flavor right

yeah I understand yeah that wasn't but the bottom line is that if you look at how MSG works in the body like it's it's I'm not even saying it's good bad or ugly it's just what it is right yeah and your your experience is very very common because if you flood the system with MSG or glutamate sources it doesn't have to be MSG like a good one that's very high brow is caviar caviar has lots of MSG so if you have any High glutamate containing foods like some of the harder cheeses as well headaches are

common and headach is a very common sign that you're overabundant in that glutamate you know versus your glutamine so versus your Gaba excuse me so you have your glutamate that's high and it's having a hard time converting itself over to Gaba and as a result of that you get those symptoms that you were describing right so it's it's always a fine balance our body is always in this balance right and and it's trying to rebalance itself when we have these stresses and that can be good and but sometimes it requires you to be thinking about

well maybe I can't get all of this from food I really have to think about how I can support my glutamine system with higher levels of glutamine if I have more symptomatic leaky gut you small intestinal bacterial overgrowth those kinds of things and then also maybe have to support your Gaba system too not only by working on the glutamine sources but how are you increasing the Gaba as well in various ways and you can do that you know primarily by improving how the Gaba receptor is working and supporting it you know while you're working on

the dietary changes and working on the leaky gut but you know often times you want to help people right now because they're having symptoms and so you can often support the Gaba system by giving things that support Gaba at the same time as working on their leaky gut and working on their glutamine and their conversion from glutamate into Gaba as well so with your vitamin B6 and magnesium yeah and I know uh you know separately I'll put a link down below to you know you guys' project and transcriptions and what you guys do with that

cuz there's some interesting stuff that I've talked about on this channel before like trro calm and ways to improve kind of increase gabble levels which is really interesting something that I've been a big fan of for a long time yeah we're a big fan of looking at the Gaba receptor in a very novel way not just what's going to be binding the receptor in some alisic way which is like around the receptor but what are you actually doing to make sure that Gaba doesn't get efficient or depleted and most of my patients are Gaba deficient

but no doctor ever ask them about it and because nobody thinks that if somebody's depressed or anxious or can't sleep that it could be a Gaba deficiency but it could and so if you can support the Gaba system in this holistic way right looking at supporting the Gaba receptor by enhancing not only just what's binding to it on these other sites but also Gaba itself along with you know magnesium and B6 and that conversion over the glutamate to Gaba like that's a bit of a longer process for people but if you do them together like

you can get people sleeping and feeling better like their mood regulated their uh their overall just feeling of just comfort in themselves just go up so much because if you're over if you're overabundant in glutamate especially like you're just jittery you're edgy all the time like you're not a fun person to be around right so like that's not what we want to be and you show up for our our spouses and our kids and and things and just supporting that Gaba system can go so far in helping them and so yeah troom is is a

big one for that but in general my perspectives as you know Tom is like is that I really want to support the system as much as possible so like looking and testing vitamins and minerals and nutrients looking at their like their copper and their their zinc level is really important as well to make sure the receptor is working magnesium B6 is as well really really important as well as the glutamine levels so yeah it's I mean even if it's one of those things that's just a a pattern interrupt for someone to be able to get

off that ledge and be able to do the inner work that they need to do you know it's like that's kind of what it is for me it's like I don't like to rely on things but I do also know that there's part of that internal sort of wisdom that you have to listen to sometimes is that hey yes there is a time and a place where I need to intervene or need an intervention and that's where you can have something else step in whether it's glutamine whether it's transcriptions whether it's you know whatever the

intervention is to get you to that place where you're in the head space where you can do the work to get yourself right because I think people don't realize how important the mental and emotional side of this is with the gut too 100% And that's always my perspective too and in fact we have a nonprofit organization it's called Health optimization medicine and practice it was formed in 2017 Dr Ted aoso is the founder he's also the founder of transcriptions and the key was optimizing Health instead of treating disease okay most people out there are looking

at treating disease looking at the root cause of illness and that's okay but if you're not focused on how to keep people healthy how to keep those cells healthy that's the foundation that's the ground of it all but while you're doing that while you're looking at optimizing vitamins minerals nutrients circadian rhythms exposure es relationships you name all these things these are really important it could take a long time to feel better it can take if you've the common scenario is that somebody wants to feel better tomorrow but it took them 40 years to feel the

way they do right so they can't expect that tomorrow they're going to feel better but that's why transcriptions was developed as a way to help people you know right now while they're on that longer path to optimizing their health which takes a while like I want to optimize my B6 and magnesium levels in my patients I want to optimize their gut but I've had it take years to optimize people's guts in some cases if you deal with parasites and you have to deal with bacterial overgrowth and then you have to do various kinds of things

and then you have to have of course compliance as well and people are doing the things but it can take a lot of time so what are you going to do in the in in the in the inter term like you said like the glutamine or maybe a transcriptions product could help you or lots of different things can help overall maybe going on a Meditation Retreat like just becoming more parasympathetic just relaxing a little bit can really really help as well and you just like we say you know calming down is usually the answer to

most problems so yeah agreed man well I'll link out to everything down below and then otherwise where can people find so transcriptions is a good place so transcription. comom is where we have some of our products um I'm personally on Instagram at Dr Scott Shar D RS ttsh h e RR that's probably where I do most of my work overall so perfect thanks man all right thank you