The Tummy Whisperer

Ep. 17 - Cultivating a Balanced Microbiome: Unveiling the Impact of Dietary Choices and Environmental Toxins on Holistic Health

• Renee Barasch

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Ever wondered how your gut microbiome could be the key to your overall health? Join us on this enlightening episode of the Tummy Whisperer Podcast as we unravel the complex world of microbiomes, exploring their crucial roles in the gut, mouth, skin, and vaginal canal. You'll learn how environmental toxins and poor dietary habits can disrupt these delicate systems, leading to a host of health issues. We delve into the effectiveness of various diets—paleo, carnivore, vegan—and why a balanced, diverse approach is essential for a thriving microbiome.

In this episode, I share my personal journey with histamine sensitivity and the transformative dietary changes that helped resolve my skin rashes. We highlight the importance of lifestyle adjustments over quick fixes, focusing on the interconnectedness of the body's systems, from digestion to detoxification. Discover how urinalysis and stool tests can offer valuable insights into your health, and learn about products that manage infections without causing further complications. The episode underscores the vital connections between oral, gut, and vaginal health, emphasizing a balanced microbiome as the cornerstone of wellness.

Finally, we address the critical role of nutrition in maintaining health and preventing common chronic conditions like high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Learn how balancing minerals, improving digestion, and reducing environmental toxins can make a significant impact on your well-being. We also discuss the importance of clean eating and the wealth of healthier food options now available. Fertility issues and the health of your furry friends aren't left out either—both partners need a healthy diet and microbiome, and pets can benefit from microbiome tests too. Tune in for a treasure trove of practical tips to enhance your health and the health of your loved ones!


Get to the root cause of your Gut Issues!  Watch the Gut Restoration Masterclass at https://learn.digestivehealthsolutions.com/

For a FREE Gut Health consultation, visit us at  https://thetummywhisperer.com/.

Contact Renee:
Email: Nhsolutions@sbcglobal.net

Speaker 2:

here we go and we're live.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, janine, for always getting us live. Welcome, everybody. Welcome to the tummy whisperer podcast. I'm your host, renee barish, your happy tummy whisperer, and today I'm excited to bring you some information about a big buzzword that people have been talking about for years they got microbiome. Everybody's heard of it, janine, you've heard of it. Right, we're going to talk about it. We're going to talk about what it is, how to get it balanced, to at least get it working, what can be happening in the body as a result of the microbiome that's out of balance, and also be talking about the different kind of microbiomes and the different parts of the body. So, without any further ado, if you don't have any questions, janine, I'm going to dive in. Do it All right? So the gut microbiome people are again they are aware of. So, as I mentioned a minute ago, there's different parts of the body that have different microbiomes. So your mouth has a microbiome, your gut has a microbiome, your gut has a microbiome, your vaginal canal for the females have a microbiome, and there are microbiomes on your skin. All the different parts of the body have their own good guys that they need to help protect, fight off unwelcome visitors and keep our body healthy and strong.

Speaker 1:

The problem is, today we are bombarded and you guys have heard me talk about this ad nauseum at this point with all the kind of toxicities of the world, so poisonous food, gluten and things that are overly sprayed, a lot of airborne chemicals I can talk chemtrails, but I won't go there the chemicals in the water, the chemicals just everywhere that completely bombard our body and our bodies have to start to process, if it can, and move those out. And our good guys, our fighters, are responsible for helping our bodies do that. So what happens when we don't have good guys on board? It's not just a matter of taking hey, I'm going to take a 20 billion probiotic. You hear people saying I took a 30 billion probiotic and it didn't do anything. Or you hear I felt worse. That's because certain strains of probiotic can overgrow in the small intestine and that's something that you don't want. You want to have a blend, you want to have diversity, you want to have enough of the right kinds, you want to have a rotating, enough of the right kind here I'll turn my phone off here and you also want to make sure that you have that balance, that rotating balance, because it's not just the right balance all the time, it's a rotation that makes sense.

Speaker 1:

So I was mentioning about how we need different kinds of diverse strains, not only in the gut but in our vaginal canal, on our skin, everywhere, that our bodies need this protection. So what happens when we start to have a toxic overload? We know from digestion, from a digestive standpoint, if we're not breaking down the proper incoming load, that's going to cause the microbiome to not be able to work properly, because if it's busy trying to fight these incoming modes of food and pesticides and Roundup and all this other toxic stuff, then how can our fighters actually work well? So what does that do? That impairs digestion. The first part of impaired digestion also mutes and basically slaps our detoxification pathways. So when we don't have good detoxification, we start to now get hormonal destabilization and once you've got that, you're in this like kind of perfect storm and the body goes into a feedback loop. And here come the symptoms. Right, I've talked about it before digestive symptoms from gas, floating constipation, diarrhea, just burping. I have a new client. I just started working with his chief complaint. He doesn't feel bad, but his chief complaint is that he has a horrible odor that comes out of his mouth Probably his mouth. Microbiome is off from downstream. What's happening in the gut right, so the body can present all kinds of symptoms when that balance is off, greatly affects the liver right. And if the liver can't move that stuff out, we just don't have the way to convert a lot of our nutrients, absorb a lot of our nutrients. And the list goes on.

Speaker 1:

Let's look at the types of diets. Right, there's so many out there. We got paleo, we got carnivore, we got vegan, we got all these things right. And there's no one size fits all. If somebody starts eating a vegan diet and they feel so much better, that's great and that actually works for them. And if they feel better long-term, boom, they've nailed it.

Speaker 1:

And if they feel good, but if they don't feel as good two, three, four, five months into it, you then have to start looking at other foods that have these chemistries that help build the microbiome. So let's take vegetables, for example. You know there's fiber, there's polyphenols and certain bacteria actually needs those things to be able to thrive the good bacterias. You start going carnivore and you don't have those things. Where are you going to get that from? And there's a lot of different studies on carnivore versus paleo, versus blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1:

Again, no one size fits all. You have to try what's right for you and I like starting with a little bit of a mix of things. Don't just start one diet off the bat. Where you start to throw off your whole chemistry, start to make changes slowly. Where you start to throw off your whole chemistry, start to make changes slowly, and of course I'm here to help everybody do that as well. Back to vegetables and food and bacteria and pathogens and all that stuff. It's really important that your incoming food, your secretory IgA, sees what's coming in and can actually invite it in for processing. If it can't say gluten and all of a sudden it's like whoa, right, there we have an issue and the body can go into a tiny little bit of a chemistry refractory response where nothing can work right.

Speaker 1:

All of a sudden there's just this alarm happening. When the alarm's happening, you're not getting good digestion, you're not getting good absorption, you're not getting good detoxification right. Making sense, you're not getting good detoxification right, making sense a lot of problems stemming from so much antibiotic usage. I get case after case after case in hand for over 20 years of unresolved urinary tract infection, because it's not an infection, but the doctor says, hey, you've got some pain, here's your antibiotic. What that do that further disrupts your microbiome, your vaginal biome, your mouth biome, your skin biome and there's all these very specific biome sequencing bugs that need to be available in the body to have a healthy body.

Speaker 1:

So for me, I was raised on a lot of ear infections, tons of antibiotics, white bread like all the bad food, which wasn't even that bad back then but a lot of ear infections, a lot of you know urinary tract infections as a kid. So much antibiotic usage. And they didn't know about probiotics back then, on 58. They didn't. Nobody talked about a probiotic back in the sixties. It wasn't even a thing, not until the late seventies or even the early 80s. So right there I have so many people and I know everybody listening is like yep, that's me. Doctor, can't figure it out. Lots of antibiotics. Obviously you need them for certain things, and it's not the wrong thing. It's just the overuse of them that cause our bodies to become then resistant to them. The best thing that you can do is make your own natural antibiotics with the right diet, the right digestion, the right microbiome, and it sounds great. And it's a lot harder than it sounds. But again, it's everything that I talk about. Right, we go back to these kind of different types of diets, whether it's low histamine or a little more fiber or a little more Mediterranean like this.

Speaker 1:

I went through a case this morning of a client who she's low histamine. She's feeling better, doing pretty good. She's about 80, 85% better, but there's still this little bit of like gas that's like always there. So we know something's not right. So we went over test results. Turns out she needs to eat a little bit more polyphenols, a little bit more like olive oil, a little bit more Mediterranean diet, because that's what her body needs.

Speaker 1:

And this was fascinating. She came to me because she was having this overnight, waking up between 1, 33 o'clock, and of course in my field everyone says, oh, they go to the Chinese clock. That's the liver, not always. She actually is overgrowing a strain. I wrote it down because I can pronounce it. It's called Bacteroides fragilis. It's elevated in her test, right, and that is actually the one that wakes people up in the middle of the night to go poop, and sure enough, she's got an overgrowth of this. So now that we know it's there, we know what to do. But isn't that fascinating? Because you do. You always want to go to the Chinese clock and go oh, it must be the large intestine, it's got to be the liver, oh, it's got to be the kidney. And yes, there's a correlation. However, she's got this over overgrowth and we found it.

Speaker 1:

So, for her particular case, we need more of a little bit of a dietary change for her, and she'll be thrilled because I think we'll be able to eat a little bit more food that she's been used to. We have her pretty restricted and she's been excellent at doing it and she feels better. But again, we don't have her really to her finish line yet. So it was a mouthful there, but I think it's just so important for those of you that are out there. Hey, I'm taking my probiotics, I'm feeling better. Bravo For those of you that are like I'm taking my probiotics, I don't know if I'm feeling anything because we don't know what's going on in your GI tract. Yet For those of you that have taken probiotics and I got a little bloaty from them, I got a little worse from them.

Speaker 1:

Obviously your gut is out of balance and it's this perfect storm of the food, the diet, the overgrowths, our toxic load, our emotions, which, of course, dr Keri and I have talked about at Nauseam, but that's probably the top of the list there. But that's her department and I just think it's really important to start zeroing in on at this time. Our world isn't getting less polluted, guys. The world's getting more polluted and more toxic. We have more ways to help ourselves and we've had to come up with these wonderful infrared saunas and water filters and things to clean our food with, because we can't sanitize our own incoming load Right. But that's why we make stomach acid. And how many people do you know, janine, are on Nexium right, shutting down their stomach acid?

Speaker 2:

Oh my gosh. And people love Tums like it's a handy.

Speaker 1:

And not that those things are the wrong thing and they're okay to get you from point A to point B, but they shut off your digestion, they completely shut it off and you need stomach acid to digest your food, sanitize your food, start to break it down so that it can break those bonds and get it to your cells via acid and digestive enzymes. People looking for the quick fix, the pill, the magic pill there is no magic pill, guys. I'm sorry. I'm here to take the wind out of your sails. It's lifestyle.

Speaker 1:

It's really about caring about yourself and, as I always say, if nothing changes, if you're noticing something on your skin, you know it's like a rash, like a little before I knew I was sensitive to histamines, I would get this kind of rash under the arm and on my forearms and I thought, oh, I've got a parasite infection, I've got something.

Speaker 1:

Of course everybody has them, right, and I couldn't wrap my head around what it was. And finally, when I went low histamine, the rashing went away, right when there's histamine present from infections, because it's there or histamine in the gut or both places, and you start having a little bit of like destabilization with your mast cells. You're already on this, like you're already on the kind of the teeter-totter, and what you don't want to do is you don't want to be in a place where you're only here, right, you got to find that balance and, yes, for many of my clients, we go up and down a little bit, but we want to be able to be always in a little bit of this, not here, right, and that's all the work. So what do you think, jenny?

Speaker 2:

I think it's fascinating that urinalysis test that urinalysis test that's the one.

Speaker 1:

No, that's the digestive urinalysis test. This is actually a specific stool test for the microbiome. The urine test is the first part. Checks for the digestion, detoxification, absorption, and this does two in a different way. So this is like next level stuff. So I'd say for maybe only 20 to 25% of my clients do they need to have the stool test, but for everybody else it's really diet and digestion and lifestyle for sure. But it's really fascinating. There's even some of the products that I'm using from this particular company can start to mobilize, even off gassing from infection. So take H pylori is an infection and a lot of people have it, and there's actually strains that are beneficial. But what you don't want is an overgrowth of the wrong ones.

Speaker 1:

So one of the products that I use actually doesn't just go in and annihilate it and kill it, because then you start having another whole host of issues. Can that person actually get rid of all that waste? That's always an issue. But this stuff that actually just binds to it and out it goes, it doesn't kill it, it binds to the toxin from it, the mycotoxin from it, and then out it goes. So pretty fascinating. So there's definitely more than 1,000 to 10,000 ways to skin the cat Something interesting too that I just came across not too long ago. But I had a client who always has like mouth issues to go to the dentist and she'll feel like a film on her teeth that's coming from her gut and her mouth. And there's ways to do a rinse and swish with something that's not necessarily like an antifungal or an antimicrobial but could be a little bit of like IgG support, a little bit of certain strain of probiotic, with a rinse and swallow to help downstream, because this is an extension of this and vice versa, because what goes?

Speaker 1:

in goes down but what doesn't process down in the tummy comes back up or can also go downstream into the vaginal canal. When we're looking at vaginal infections, we're always looking at mouth, stomach, mouth itself. Guys, right, everything goes in and down. So when you're looking at problems below the waist, always look at what's going in and how the body's managing it and can the body manage it and how balanced are you within your microbiome?

Speaker 2:

Wow, pretty fascinating. Actually, you don't know what you don't know, and this always goes back to call Renee. If you're listening to this, if you're watching this, call Renee. She knows what she's talking about. I had years and years of discomfort and it all went away literally in due time, because I listened and I did what you said, and I think it's so important for people to stop going to Western medicine doctors for as a first, as a first step For nutrition. Right for nutrition, because there's symptoms of something other than pills. Right.

Speaker 1:

And and to just to bring that forward. What you're talking about is a lot of people don't even know that they're having a nutritional issue. So look at, like high blood pressure A lot of times that can be it's not just lowering the salt, it's really actually balancing the minerals and probably adding a little bit more salt, but maybe lowering the histamine load in the body, digesting the food better, having enough alkaline minerals, having enough acid minerals, having enough balance right, having all that. So it's not just take a blood pressure medication yes, you have to take that to bridge the gap so that you don't have a longer term issue. But working on the diet part is a huge piece for blood sugar, blood pressure, cholesterol, all the things that people are like oh, I'm high, but now, oh, look, I've sunk my cholesterol number, which is another podcast that we'll talk about because cholesterol is good and shouldn't be 150, especially if men ever want to have an erection again. So just saying, just saying.

Speaker 2:

You never know what you're going to find on the tummy whisperer.

Speaker 1:

I'm telling you cholesterol. You need cholesterol. It's actually there to protect you, right? You don't want it clogging your arteries or anything, but you need a balance, right? And if your body's making some cholesterol, it really depends on where you are from females in your cycle, whether you're in menopause or not. That all plays into everything. And taking that Lipitor to sink that number you got to look at. Why is the cholesterol elevated? To begin with, cholesterol is a hormone made in the liver. If your liver is overworked and underpaid which everybody's is you're going to have more cholesterol, is going to be sparking even more and more. So why does that happen? Start looking at what you're putting in your mouth. Start looking at how toxic your environment is.

Speaker 1:

Do you guys use plugins? Do you guys Febreze? We did an episode about this. I'm in the car the other day and I'm trying not to go postal because there's a commercial for Febreze and the guy's like there's some music, he's happy. He's like forget the deep clean, if you need a quick spray, he goes here, hit my back and you hear she's like oh, I feel great. And I'm like oh, my God, are you kidding me right now? But they're selling this. My husband is in advertising and he's just oh his head in shame. But advertising is powerful. Febreze cleans your house, right? What it doesn't clean your house? It gives you more crap and cancer.

Speaker 2:

It sprays chemicals and carcinogens through your hair.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so anyway, I don't want to go down that rabbit hole because we did like a whole episode and a half on that, but again I want to paint a picture for everybody that everything matters, everything counts, everything is important. Little tiny changes now are so easy. It's so easy to get the food that you need at any grocery store Trader Joe's, aldi If you need a gluten-free bread and you can't afford whole foods, and you've got an Aldi, great, there you can get online, I found when I was eating a lot of gluten-free before. We don't eat much grain anymore, mark and I. But this company called Pacha makes a sourdough gluten-free bread. Whole Foods carries it now and it's a nice size loaf and the slices are really thin, which is great. You can't overdo. Like two is not even a half of a slice of a regular bread and it's only buckwheat and water. Sounds fabulous.

Speaker 1:

Organic, non-gmo. They've got milks out there that are glyphosate free. Right, they don't have the Roundup on them. They're tested for the parts per million of Roundup. That's the Kiki milk. I think I mentioned it. We use that for our smoothies. Companies are really trying to get clean stuff for us because unfortunately we have to, and so many women with fertility issues. In fact, I have a client who's just going to be starting with me, her husband and her having issues. He's having issues poor diet. We're going to see what we can do in terms of getting their diet checked in, getting them absorbing better, cleaning up their microbiome and seeing if they can't not only conceive but carry to term, because it's not just the woman's responsibility. He doesn't have healthy sperm to begin with, right, so we're going to see what we can do. It takes work on both ends, so they're going to that's a great point Great point.

Speaker 1:

They're going to take a year to prepare both their bodies and then start trying after, and they don't need a year. I would say six months a month and a half to clean up the diet, another two to three months to work on balancing. If we need to kill anything off, add another month or two to that low and slow. But you definitely don't want to be in a killing phase where you're starting trying to produce. Yeah. So anyway, hugh and I always end up going down these rabbit holes because I can never stick to one thing with digestion, because it's just, it's everywhere and it's everything, and it's everything for you guys. It's so important in terms of your long-term health. So I'm looking, I made a bunch of notes for today too, and I want to see if there's anything else that I missed here.

Speaker 2:

We got Rook in the background looking at me. He's so cute I know he's actually here. He's actually under the table, Aww.

Speaker 1:

I did Rook's microbiome test. They have an animal biome one. It's $139. So hounds have. Hounds can tend to have a little bit looser stool, plus he dietary indiscretion for him. I'm on a trail hike and he's got everything in his mouth from like dead mice to human poop. I'm like drop it. So anyway, he's always a little bit on the looser side, never like a good easy pickup.

Speaker 1:

Let's do it, and I had a feeling he needed a little bit of Saccharomyces boulardii, but he needed actually. He's got two products. He doesn't have any overgrowth of anything bad, but he's missing some strains. So this company takes poop from healthy dogs, they test the fecal matter and they clean it and they put it in capsules. And Rook is eating dog poop in a capsule plus some Saccharomyces boulardii, and his gut is doing so much better.

Speaker 2:

That is fascinating.

Speaker 1:

And he needs a little bit more fiber. So I'm using the green juju, I just mix it in with his food and his poops are fantastic. I pick them up.

Speaker 2:

I'm like, yeah so excited Animal bio, who knew?

Speaker 1:

Well, because poor dogs. We're killing our animals with all our toxicity. When dogs were wolves, they survived and they figured it out because the world was less toxic years and years ago. Now the expectancy for our wildlife is a lot less, because they don't have clean water, they don't have clean air and they're breathing in chemtrails. And that's my story and I'm sticking to it. That's pretty sad. For those of you that have loose stool, I recommend for your doggies the animal biome test. And if you that have loose stool, I recommend for your doggies the animal biome test. And if you have human loose stool, call renee all the tummy whisperer.

Speaker 1:

Call the tummy whisperer. Yeah, it's important. And the other thing, guys, I make it really easy. It is not. This isn't like an overhaul where you can't eat anything. You have to just start somewhere. You're already going to the grocery store. You have to buy food anyway. If you're doing a lot of door dash, there's plenty of options. And if you're door dashing a couple of nights a week and you're cooking a couple of nights a week, I like to make it really easy, plug and play, so that you can start to feel better and not have your health be a full-time job. I have many clients who are trying to retire. They're in retirement and their full-time job. Being sick, feeling horrible. That's no way to live, as my mentor says, that's no way to run the way road which I run away, so with that.

Speaker 1:

My invitation to everybody is, of course, please start to do one thing, whether it's a little research, whether it's reach out to me for a free, 15-minute consultation. You can reach me at thetummywhisperercom. Happy to answer any questions that you have. Reach me at thetummywhisperercom, happy to answer any questions that you have. It is my joy and privilege to help people, give them the information that they need so that they can have a healthy life, not only for themselves, but for their family, their loved ones and their dogs. Get that animal biome test and their cats. I think the animal biome test does cats too. So, anyway, animal biome Test.

Speaker 2:

That's fascinating, and remember to follow Renee and the Tummy Whisperer. You can find her on Apple Podcasts, spotify, iheartradio, you name it, she's on there. Make sure you leave her a rating and a five-star review, because she is fantastic.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, janine, thank you everybody. Until next time, stay well, chew your food, drink your water in between your meals, and if you have any questions about anything and I mean anything, I don't care if it's helpful or not give me a call. Take care, guys.