Dr Vincent Pedre shares his second book The GutSmart Protocol, how to Revitalize Your Health, Boost Your Energy, and Lose Weight in Just 14 Days with Your Personalized Gut-Healing Plan. He dives deep into how the gut can play a major role in autoimmune disease and how healing the gut to drastically minimize or elimination your Hashimoto's symptoms.

In this Episode:

1. The focus is on the small and large intestine and the microbiome living there, which is essential for the processes that run the human body.
2. The large intestine has an estimated 100 trillion bacteria, making it like carrying your own personal galaxy.
3. Autoimmune disease may begin in the gut with a process involving genetic preposition, leaky gut, and environmental triggers.
4. Gluten is one potential environmental trigger due to its characteristics that can trigger the immune response.
5. Imbalance in the gut microbiome due to antibiotics, processed foods, and alcohol consumption can cause dysbiosis, leading to a dysregulation of the immune system that eventually can lead to autoimmune disease.
6. Leaky gut allows inflammatory substances like endotoxin to pass through the gut border, leading to immune system activation and inflammation.
7. Over-activation of the immune system can cause it to fail to recognize what is self and what is non-self, potentially leading to autoimmune disease.
8. Many women are given medication and told to eat less and exercise more, rather than addressing the connection between gut health and metabolism/weight gain.
9. Stress can lead to gut permeability and affect the gut microbiome, which can contribute to weight gain and difficulty losing weight.
10. Gut healing and detoxification can help with weight loss and metabolic issues.
11. Environmental triggers like mold or mycotoxins can contribute to gut permeability and inflammation, even in the absence of traditional gut symptoms.

About Dr Vincent Pedre:

Dr. Vincent Pedre is the Medical Director of Pedre Integrative Health and Founder of Dr. Pedre Wellness, CEO/Founder of Happy Gut Life LLC, has worked as a nutraceutical consultant and spokesperson for NatureMD, and is a Functional Medicine-Certified Practitioner with a concierge practice in New York City since 2004.

He believes the gut is the gateway to excellent wellness. His newest book, The GutSMART Protocol — featuring a 14-day personalized gut-healing plan based on the GutSMART Quiz — is the culmination of years of research and clinical experience as a functional gut health expert.

Where you can find Dr Vincent Pedre:

www.pedremd.com

IG: @drpedre

His New Book: https://gutsmartprotocol.com/gift/

Where you can find Emily Kiberd:

Follow Dr Emily Kiberd and Thyroid Strong on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | TikTok

If you want more information on when the doors open for the next round of Thyroid Strong , join the waitlist: dremilykiberd.com/tswaitlist

If you’re looking to lose weight with Hashimoto’s, grab my free download: https://www.dremilykiberd.com/weight/

If you’re looking to beat the Hashimoto’s fatigue, download my free resource here:

https://www.dremilykiberd.com/fatigue/

Dr.

Vincent Pedre, welcome to Thyroid Strong Podcast.

This is actually the second time you've been on.

You're one of the few people who've been on twice, so very exciting.

We are gonna dive deep into your new book, the Gut Smart Protocol, which I actually

dove deep into, the past couple days.

And it is so clearly written.

There are beautiful diagrams and you share stories of people that you've

transformed their gut symptoms.

It, it warms my heart to hear you say that because the, the amount of sweat

equity that I put into this book was like 10 times what I put into my first book.

Because I wanted to make it so approachable and easy to understand

for people that there was no question, like, it's just clear.

The message that I'm trying to get across about how the gut is the foundation

for all of your health, every, every system in the body, especially immune

system, is connected to your gut health.

Yeah.

And the book feels refined.

Um, I am a big fan.

Simplicity, yet still getting the message AC across.

And you, you feel that when you read it.

Uh, for people who have not read your first book, when you're talking about the

gut, what are you actually talking about?

Like from, from where to where In the body.

Wow.

So, I mean, from the simple point of view, you know, the gut starts in the

back of your throat with the esophagus.

It goes into your stomach, small intestine, large intestine, and

then rectum, and you poop what you eat, then you poop it out.

But when we're, when we're talking about the gut and what affects our health in a

very dramatic way, We're really kind of focusing into the small intestine, the

large intestine, and specifically the microbiome that lives in there, especially

in the large intestine, which is the biggest reservoir of our microbiome.

The large intestine has a hundred trillion bacteria estimated, which if you

put it into perspective, there are 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

So we've got multiples of that inside Arga.

You know, you're carrying, I almost think of it like you're

carrying your own personal galaxy.

And if you think about that, like, oh my God, I have a galaxy.

Inside my gut and this galaxy has evolved from the very beginning of time dating

back to the first humans that maybe is like 50,000 years ago and has been

handed down generation to generation over all of this time, and it essential for

the processes that run the human body.

I mean, it's how would you treat it?

How would you take care of it?

If you know that how you take care of it determines how it takes care of your body.

Yeah, that's pretty mind-blowing to think of it in that perspective.

For the autoimmune population who might not know that there's a connection

between the gut and having an autoimmune condition, can you share that connection?

Absolutely.

Uh, first of all, it's, it's one of the biggest connections that there is

and there are theories that autoimmune disease actually begins in the gut.

With a process that involves three things that, um, a very,

um, prominent researcher.

At Harvard, m i t discovered this, this triad that he calls that

then can cause autoimmune disease.

And he said genetic preposition, you might have the genetics for it, but genetics

does not determine what gets expressed.

Then leaky gut and environmental trigger.

So if you have these three things, then you have the setup.

For developing autoimmune disease, but I think we need to understand this further.

So he was looking at gluten as being that environmental trigger and saying

that gluten has certain characteristics about it that almost looks like

the surface of bacteria, and that can trigger the immune response.

but I think it's even more complicated than that because depending on what

is living inside the gut, and if you have a lot of good bacteria versus bad

bacteria and you have, you're, you're exposed to things that would damage the

balance of that ecosystem, you know?

So also we can think of it as a garden or an ecosystem that when in

balance your health is gonna be good.

And when outta balance, it's gonna cause a domino.

That's going to affect so many other aspects of your health.

So now you're growing up and maybe you do have the genetics for Hashimotos, for

some sort of autoimmune disease doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna develop it.

But then you have antibiotics for u t I.

Then you have a a bronchitis pharyngitis.

You're giving antibiotics over and over.

Each time.

It's affecting the makeup of your gut microbiome.

It's causing increased levels of leaky gut.

and maybe you're having drinks, alcohol, which also causes dysbiosis.

So dysbiosis just means an imbalance between the good and bad buds in the gut.

So alcohol is a disinfectant.

Well, it disinfects your gut, but not in a good way.

It kills off good bacteria, which then imbalances that ecosystem.

Then eating processed foods, too much sugar, all the processed foods out there,

inflammatory oils, and you're basically.

Setting up a domino effect pathway that's going to lead to a dysregulation

of the immune system that eventually can lead to autoimmune disease.

Because once you have leaky gut, and we know that a molecule like gluten increases

gut permeability, even in normal people.

That that leaky gut is going to allow inflammatory

substances to path through it.

And there's one that I talk about in my book called Endotoxin.

And Endotoxin is released by gram-negative bacteria in in the large intestine.

And you don't mean to know like what it means, it just means how the

bacteria is seen in a gram stain.

But what's important to know is we all have these bacteria in our.

And what's protecting us from being exposed to endotoxin is

having that gut border sealed up.

So when the gut border becomes leaky and develops holes in between

the cells, that endotoxin has a much easier pathway into the body.

And what it does is it's one of the most potent activators of the immune.

And it activates the immune system.

It, it causes muscle inflammation, it increases insulin resistance that

then causes more fat around the belly.

When you have more fat around the belly, you're gonna have

more inflammatory uh, signals.

And then, you know, when you, when your immune system then goes off

balance and is overactivated, then eventually the theory is that at some.

the immune system can become so overactivated that it fails to recognize

what is self and what is non-self.

There's also theory that when.

Gluten gets through and, and we can't break down gluten easily.

There's a whole bunch of different, um, wheat proteins and if we don't

break down goin, which is one of them, um, it can form a, a, what we call

a kyira is like a molecule that's made up of two different things.

So the kyira is gluten with an enzyme in the body known as tissue transaminase,

and that new molecule, those two things bound together are presented.

To the immune system.

So again, our gut is the biggest presence of the immune system in the entire body.

70 to 80% of the immune system right along the gut.

And imagine that that gut has these cells, we call them dendritic cells,

they're like patrol, they're like the border patrol and they're just walking

around and they're looking at for what's coming and they're gonna like

take a sampling of something and see, Hmm, is this self or is this non-self?

So then they, they swallow one of those.

Wheat, um, gliadin tissue, transaminase, chimeric molecules.

It has, part of it is something that's from your body.

It's an enzyme, but the other part is foreign to the body.

The combination of the two creates a new molecule that doesn't look

like self, and the body then says, okay, the dendritic cell takes this

to your, your B cells, and says, you need to create antibodies to this.

This is not.

The problem is, is that tissue transaminase is an enzyme that's

found throughout the body in different tissues, and one of the places

it's found is here in the thyroid.

So your body develops an immune response that's been activated,

and part of it might be against your own tissue transaminase.

And then you start attacking the thyroid.

And that's one theory about how leaky gut, along with an environmental

trigger here being gluten, can eventually lead to Hashimotos or

an auto autoimmune thyroiditis.

I think this is such an important point because especially with that

idea of belly fat coming from an inflammatory response, coming from

an immune response, most women when they're seeing their doctors are given

medication and possibly told, potentially told to move more and eat less, right?

Looking at it from a caloric deficit approach versus really

a more comprehensive approach.

Start to work on your gut.

Yeah, and I think that's a, that's a common mistake made is not

understanding the connection between the gut and metabolism and, and weight gain.

If you're, you know, you're doing everything right.

You're going to the gym, you're running on the treadmill all the time, but

you're living a stressed out lifestyle.

Maybe you're skipping lunch, maybe you're just having a green juice.

You think you're being healthy, you're, you're restricting,

you're eating less calories.

But what you're actually doing is you're putting your body under stress.

And the other thing that affects the gut, gut permeability and the gut microbiome.

Is stress.

I like to say that stress is like an attack on your gut.

So now you're not necessarily eating the right diet.

Maybe you're undereating protein, which puts your body into a stressed mode,

and women's bodies are very sensitive to whether the body feels safe or unsafe.

If your body's in stressed mode, it's gonna be me more in a, in a.

Inflammatory state, and then you get more leaky gut.

You get inflammatory substances coming in.

You start packing on weight in the middle, even though you're running on

the treadmill for 45 minutes, five times per week, and you're calorie restricting.

You think you're doing all the right things, but you can't lose weight.

and maybe your doctor thinks that it's your thyroid, but maybe

there's something deeper than that.

It's, uh, it's a metabolic, um, metabolic short circuit that's happening

because your gut is out of balance.

And I can't tell you how many times I've seen women men.

Who can't lose weight, their body is stuck at a certain level,

and then you incorporate gut healing, gut detoxification into a

protocol, and suddenly their body is shedding pounds with no effort.

Yeah.

I wanna talk about, just touch upon this idea of leaky gut en environmental trig

triggers, which you talked about, and I think it's a very vicious cycle, and so

I'm curious how to get out of that cycle.

So certain environmental triggers, Can create looseness in those

junctions in the gut lining, right?

Then allowing more foreign bodies to pass through that lining.

I, the thing that comes to mind is maybe some mold or mycotoxins

can loosen the borders and then,

Abs and, and get through, and then they trigger a whole host

of inflammatory symptoms that you, as the person are thinking, I'm tired.

I just don't feel energetic like I used to.

I have brain fog, you know, maybe I, my memory's not as good as it used to be.

And you go to your doctor and they tell you you're in your

mid forties, you're getting old.

It's part of getting old.

But it isn't.

It doesn't have to be.

It's just that they're looking at the wrong side of the equation.

They're not realizing that you've gotta go to the gut, to the

cornerstone of your health to understand why this is happening.

Yeah.

Uh, you said something interesting in the book.

You said you don't have to have.

Symptoms to have a gut issue, which I think most people think.

Okay, bloating, burping, reflux, okay, this is all gut, but then other symptoms,

for example, joint pain, we don't like.

The first thing to come to mind is not gut, but you correlate

those two things in the book.

and I've seen it with patients over the years and it,

it just always blew my mind.

That if I found, um, you know, you, anytime you, you do a patient

intake, you, you, you know, you ask a, a broad range of questions.

You know, do you have fatigue?

Do you have joint aches?

Do you have joint swelling?

And obviously any of these things can have many different underlying factors.

You know, for example, you could have Hashimotos and yeah, you might

have some element of hypothyroidism.

and your doctor puts you on T4 and you feel a little better, but

you don't feel completely better.

But the doctor's like, well, now your, your thyroid levels are completely normal.

You're fine.

the problem is that the body is not one, one in one, like one simplistic thing.

Usually there's, there's multiple different factors affecting one

particular symptom in the body, and it could be coming from different places.

So what I found and what, uh, always shocked me is that a person could

have a parasite, have no gut symptoms, but show up with joint inflammation.

Joint aches, fatigue, and they're gonna think that I'm a new mom.

This is why I'm feeling this way.

I'm, I'm just, you know, I'm not getting enough sleep.

I'm tired and not even think.

That their gut is an issue and honestly, it, it takes a

high end index of suspicion.

But one thing that I, you know, that I really wanted to educate people on in my

new book is what I call the difference between gut centric symptoms, which

you mentioned like, you know, stomach aches, heartburn, bloating, indigestion.

You know, that's very clear that you've got some sort of gut issue

versus what I call gut related symptom.

That could be in your brain, on your skin, in your immune system, in your

lungs, your airway, your joint, that most people, your metabolism that

people don't think are related to your gut, but can be related to your gut.

One of the more dramatic cases that I had was, um, a woman who

had come from India, moved to New York, and she was a new mom and she

was feeling tired and she, she had.

Joined aches and actually had broken out into hives right before she came to see

me, and she had, um, learned about me.

Picked up my first book, and by the time she saw me, she had taken

dairy and gluten out of her diet.

Now, this is something really important to point out because in India

they're using more ancient grains.

They're not using all this modern dwarf wheat.

So a lot of times, you know, being in New York, I've seen patients come from

other countries to the US and they were fine in their country, and then they get.

When they get to the us, well with her, interestingly, she had all

of these autoimmune markers that were lighting up on a blood test.

Doctors wanted to put her on Immunosuppressives, on prednisone.

They wanted to put her on what they call biologics, which are like immune globulins

that will help block those antibodies.

and you know, she, she didn't want to, she, she wanted to take a natural

approach and she was really worried about suppressing the immune system.

Is this the right way to go?

And do you really have an autoimmune condition?

And you know, when you're, when you're looking at this, you're

thinking about everything.

Like, could she have Lyme disease?

Was she exposed to a tick bite?

You know, it could be, could she have mold in the.

but lo and behold, so I, I, I was so certain she had

something going on in her gut.

I asked her, you know, cuz sometimes people will say, no,

I don't have any gut symptoms.

And then I'll come back and I'll ask from a different direction because

sometimes people aren't fully aware.

I probably asked her five different ways and she completely denied

any gut symptoms whatsoever.

and I said, you know, but you have all these gut related health issues

and you already improved, like her hives dropped by 50% just by taking

gluten and dairy out of the diet.

So we tested her gut and we found that she was growing a yeast, it wasn't candida,

and she had a very common parasite that actually you can get in India.

Um, but it's also found very commonly in the US called Blasty Hoon.

Which if you ask gastroenterologists and traditionally trained doctors,

they would tell you, oh, the science says that this is a not a pathogen.

And you know, it's found commonly in people, but the research is actually

looked at, does Blay cause leaky gut?

And it's found that it does.

And so I treated her for yeast and for blastocystis, and within a

month, her joint aches were gone.

and within two months her energy was up.

What she thought was, you know, a tired mom because she

had a four year old at home.

It wasn't that it was the gut.

So I think if there's anything that I can get across to your listeners to, to people

who, who read my book is that you don't have to have a gut centric SY symptom

to have a gut related health issue.

Um, and you have to be really astute about understanding what are all those issues.

It could be migraines, asthma, allergies, autoimmunity, headaches.

Joint aches, fatigue, muscle aches, even anxiety, depression

are related to imbalances in the gut or imbalances in your ability

to break down and digest protein.

You know, if you're going to the gym and you're not making those muscle gains.

That you're expecting and you're thinking, you know, maybe

is it a hormonal imbalance?

Well, that goes back to the gut.

But it could also be that you're not breaking down protein properly because

you have leaky gut and you're not making enough enzyme to break down

that protein into amino acids that you need in order to build lean muscle.

Yeah.

It's really a more comprehensive kind of root cause approach, which

if everyone had access to in, in this country would be incredible.

But, you know, they can start to tap into it by starting to read gut smart protocol.

Um, you

I mean, that's why I wanted to write a book like this

is to really make, make this accessible to, to everyone.

and I wanted to simplify it and make it a food-based approach.

Um, I call it a gut body, mind, spirit approach, uh, because I think

even when you are improving the diet, you have to be, you have to

pay attention to your mindset to how your body is holding on to stress.

Does your body feel safe or does it feel.

And that's a really important thing because if your body is in a state

where it's saying, I don't feel safe, it's gonna be inflamed, it's

not gonna heal well, you're gonna stay with a lot of chronic symptoms.

So getting the body into that safe zone, which basically, in other words,

in more scientific term means, um, means activating the vagus nerve, the

longest nerve in the body that controls the parasympathetic nervous system.

Reads, what's going on with all the internal organs?

Getting that in, activating the vagus and getting into good vagal tone then

creates a sense of safety in the body that is really important to healing.

If you're anxious, if you're depressed, your body is actually in an alert act

action and, and feeling that it is unsafe.

Yeah.

So some of that vagal toning, we actually teach inside thyroid

strong during the rest breaks.

Uh, we.

Humming, singing, putting the tongue on the roof of the mouth, and like

long, slow exhales through the nose.

What are some other ones that you teach before you sit down to eat?

Oh, very important, um, in my book, so I, I, I, I teamed up with some

breath work and meditation experts.

One of them is Sasha Patel, and he has a whole protocol of before meal,

during meal and after meal breathing.

And part of it is just taking before meal is tuning into

where, where are you stress-wise?

Like if you're, if you're stress levels are here, you're at work, you're,

you're super stressed, and then you go out, you grab a quick lunch, you

bring it to your desk, and now you.

like, you know, inhaling your food, your body is not ready to receive that food.

However, it's super simple to get your body into a state where it can

receive that food, even if you just stop and take three deep breath and

at the end of each inhalation, as you exhale, you just do a big like, ah.

Just kind of releasing all of that tension in the body.

If you do that three times, you have already changed your

internal state to state words.

It's more so a lot of it is about.

Conscious living and being intentional about the moments in your life when

you're, you're taking food in, because it's very important for your body to

be in that receptive, relaxed mode in order to be able to digest food and

receive it and be able to assimilate it.

Yeah.

You talk about in the book the importance of the diversity of the microbiome.

Uh, why is this important?

I don't think a lot of people know.

Well, everyone knows what the word diversity means.

It means variety.

It's like a rainbow, right?

And in order to understand that, so I talked about how the large

intestine has a hundred trillion.

Microorganisms.

And if you look at those hundred trillion, there's anywhere between 500 and a

thousand different species, so different strains of bacteria inside each person.

But when you're, you're given an antibiotic, for example, you're.

Drinking too much alcohol.

You're eating too much sugar, you're altering the collagen.

You're actually narrowing the diversity of that microbiome.

And what we've learned now in studies is that the less diverse

your microbiome, the higher your inflammatory markers are gonna be.

The more likelihood you're gonna have leaky gut, the more likely

that you're gonna develop some sort of chronic degenerative disease.

And so, We want to increase the diversity of the gut microbiome.

We understand that there's, there's something about this diversity

that actually improves a whole host of health parameters and

they actually looked at this as a study done in Stanford University.

They did on women.

And they looked at the effects of a fiber rich diet versus

a high fermented foods diet.

And what they found was surprisingly because if, if you, uh, study

functional medicine, you hear, eat the rainbow, eat a whole bunch of fiber,

that, that, that's the best thing that creates microbial diversity.

And they actually found that that wasn't the case.

What increased microbial diversity and lowered 19 inflammatory markers

was a high fermented foods diet, and that meant anywhere between two and

four servings of ferments per day.

Now I want to qualify it because listener might think,

wow, okay, ferments are great.

I'm gonna go out.

I'm gonna buy sauerkraut, pickles, yogurt, keifer.

I'm gonna start having a whole bunch of ferments.

and then the next thing you know you're feeling sick and bloated and not so great.

Well, the thing is, again, individualizing it is really important.

That's why I designed a quiz with my book.

I call it the Gut Smart Quiz.

And if you take the quiz and your gut smart score falls in the severe category,

then you can't have ferments yet.

They're gonna make you sick.

We need to do some gut healing.

Get you down to moderate level and then you can start incorporating

some fermented foods, but only like a quarter teaspoon testing.

Little bit at a time, you know, and it, I think what I've come to really

appreciate over time, um, you know, because in America we think like if

little's good, then a lot is even better.

Like just go gangbusters.

And I've seen.

You know, chat threads online, like people heard that resistance starch is

really good for insulin sensitivity, and they just started, um, taking a

bunch of the, um, resistance starch supplement and then they're feeling

really bloated, horrible, um, lots of stomach pain, and it's because you, you

have to be careful with these things.

and you have to be intuitive with it.

But I think also people need to hear this, that you, you wanna start

low test and then increase based on how your body's reacting to that.

And the end game is not to get to that high dose immediately, but to get there

when your body is ready to get there.

And that's the best way to get.

and people can identify this aspect in themselves through your.

Yeah, so they can find out what level of gut dysfunction you have,

whether it's severe, moderate, or mild.

And then depending on that, I have food lists that tell you what

foods are in, what foods are out.

and I did that so that people would know, okay, if I'm

shopping, what can I shop for?

But if I'm eating out, what can I eat?

And I provide kind of like some macro guidelines that are good for everyone,

and then I filter it down and provide the guidelines that are good for each type of.

Gut Smart score and have 65 recipes in the book that are actually classified

according to mild, moderate, or severe, depending on what your level is.

Now, obviously if you score mild, you can actually eat across all three

categories, mild, moderate, and severe, and moderates can eat moderate and severe.

The goal is to really.

You know, ha take a person on a journey if they test severe,

to take them on a journey where they, we, we get them to mild.

It might not happen in one 14 day protocol, but maybe it happens

in the course of three protocols.

And again, it's a matter of like, really, I think, uh, when people work with me,

I think of myself as a body whisperer.

Like, and I'm sure you feel the same.

Like you, you help people understand.

The, the signals that their bodies are giving them, and part of my goal

with the book is to teach people how to listen to their bodies so that they

can become their own doctor in a sense.

Because nobody knows your body and how you relate to food better than you do.

There's nobody on the planet that can know that better than you do,

but you can only know it if you're tuning in and you're being aware

of what the reactions are both.

Before you eat, thinking about what is it that I desire?

What is it that my body is craving right now?

Because there is a wisdom to that understanding while you're eating,

realizing when you're full, when you should stop eating, and if you're

at your desk stressed out, inhaling your food, you're not present, you're

not gonna know when you're full.

You're probably gonna maybe over.

But if you're present, if you're breathing, if you're, if you're eating

and chewing your food, uh, slowly, then your body's gonna tell you when, and

then afterwards listening to your body.

I call it, um, I call it free during and post-meal intuition, which is something

that I talk about developing in the book.

Um, afterwards.

It's really understanding the interconnections like you.

does your eczema get worse?

Do you, do you get a rash?

Do you get a headache after you ate?

Uh, do you, um, get a migraine?

You know, I, I have, I, I have like my kryptonite.

So for me, my kryptonite is raw onion.

And last night I went out to dinner with a.

and I forgot to tell them at the Mexican restaurant that I

did not want onions on my taco.

And I thought I pulled out as many as I could.

And I thought, you know, if I, if I just have a few, like

it's not gonna be a big deal.

Well, I woke up at two 30 in the morning with a migraine.

because it's my kryptonite and I know better that it raw onion

because of the sulfur in it, uh, can trigger migraines for some people.

So, and, and so I went against what I know my before meal intuition

was like, don't eat those onions.

And, and yet I allowed myself to eat thumb because I was like, I'm not gonna be, I

was with a friend and like, I'm not gonna be that person picking out every single

little onion sitting there at the table.

and uh, but I paid for it later on.

Yeah.

Let's break down.

Cause I think this is a important topic.

It's the biggest struggle for women with Hashimotos is difficulty losing weight,

especially that lower belly pooch.

Especially because Hashimotos is usually diagnosed around menopause

and there's a hormonal component.

There's obviously the thyroid hormone component, but let's just

look at it and break it down in a very simple way, coming from the gut

as, as, as if there's a gut gut, c.

I, I, I really like this question because I think we need

to retell the story of menopause.

I think, I think it's simplified to say, you know, you're going through menopause.

Your hormones are shifting, you're gonna gain weight.

But let's think about the woman who was going through menopause, possibly

in her late forties, early fifties.

If they're married, she's got teenagers at home, teenagers are stressful.

Maybe there's problems in the marriage.

Maybe she's stressed at work.

She's working really long hours, so this woman who is about to go through

menopause is either possibly about to go through a divorce, has teenage kids

that are causing problems at home.

Stress levels are super high.

So then let's go back and retell this story from the point of view

of how stress affects the gut.

And maybe because this post or this menopausal or perimenopausal

woman is starting to develop some vaginal dryness, suddenly she's

become prone to, um, UTIs after sex.

So then she went to her doctor and she got an antibiotic for U T

I that maybe seemingly is benign.

It's only five days of Cipro.

That's not a big deal.

Well, five days of Cipro is going to alter the gut microbiome.

It's gonna take 12 months to recover from one five day course of Cipro.

Now during those 12 months, you're under high stress.

Maybe because you're under high stress, you're drinking a glass of wine at.

To help you relax and maybe that chocolate is calling your name so

you're having some sugar, so now you're causing dysbiosis, you're calling,

causing an imbalance in your gut.

and we know the gut is really important in managing the metabolism of estrogen,

which is really critical as women go into perimenopause because they start

to lose progesterone production, and so their progesterone and estrogen

ratio starts to become imbalanced.

Too little progesterone.

Too much estrogen causes things like fibroids in the uterus,

breast tenderness, fibrocystic.

you know, maybe there's a, a cancer scare because they felt

a, a lump on their breast.

Turns out that it's benign and you're wondering what's going on.

There's brain fog, all these things not sleeping well.

And it comes back to the gut also, because if your gut microbiome is imbalance,

then it's going to produce an enzyme that releases metabolized estrogen

that's been basically tagged with an anchor to be released from the body.

And that microbiome comes in and it clips off the anchor so the estrogen

can circulate back into your body.

Cause estrogen dominance.

It's aggravating that imbalance between estrogen, progesterone.

So if we retell the story of perimenopause and menopause from the

point of view of the gut, we understand that what is very likely happening.

A higher predisposition to dysbiosis, to gut imbalance, to

leaky gut, and to all of the things that I talked about, especially.

Endotoxemia, you know, so that endotoxin I talked about that then triggers the

inflammatory cascade will also make you to put more weight in the middle.

And I can't tell you how many women I've met who are going through perimenopausal

menopause and you clean out you the diet, you help improve the gut microbiome,

improve diversity, reduce leaky gut, and their weight starts to drop.

And of course, again, Gut, body, mind, spirit.

So you've gotta deal with things at all levels.

So if they're super stressed, then let's start incorporating some self-care

techniques, meditation, exercise, yoga, mindfulness practices, um,

because you know that life gets more complicated and usually it's around the.

Perimenopause stage that you're in a complex moment in your life.

You know, you've been married for years, maybe the, the

marriage is feeling less vital.

You know, your relationship is a little boring, kittens are annoying,

you know, so, but all these things are gonna affect the balance in your gut.

And so, yeah, I hope, I hope this empowers women.

I think that it's, it's not just your hormone, it's kind of bigger than that.

and and the gut plays a really big role in, in menopause when, when

my mom was going through menopause.

I was going through my teenage hormone uh, spurt.

So just imagine I felt like I was going into puberty and my mom was

going through puberty backwards, and we were emotional sometimes arguing.

We were mad at each other and, you know, well, you know

what I, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

I, I think my mother and I went through, through that same

relationship, I love that explanation.

I think it gives so much hope to women with Hashimotos who maybe, like we said

earlier, we're just given medication and told to work out more and eat less.

I think it's.

A more comprehensive root cause approach.

And I love that there's a quiz.

It, it gives us personalization to the book, I mean I read a lot of health books

and I haven't really found that piece, so I love that that is part of the book.

Where can people find you and where can people get the.

So if they go to guts smart protocol.com, uh, they can

find all the ways to get the book.

It's gonna be on all major retailers.

The great thing about going there is they can.

At a free chapter and I've got a free chapter gift for all your listeners.

If they go to gutsmartprotocol.com/gift, they can download a free chapter from

the book with some special surprises inside, uh, to give them an an idea

of what the book is about and what's in store for them, and why it might

be beneficial for them to think about doing the 14 day protocol.

Yeah.

Everyone should just do the 14 day.

I mean, it's 14 days, right?

It can be immensely transforming.

Dr.

Pedre, thank you so much for being on thyroid.

Super informative.

I'm sure the women will love this information and I will drop

all the links in the show notes so that they can get that gift.

I really appreciate the, the invite back and having been on your

podcast now a second time, I feel special and I, I really appreciate,

uh, your thoughtful questions

about the topics in my book.