the purpose of this presentation is to convey information...

©2016 The Kellman Center for Integrative and Functional Medicine. All rights reserved. 1

The Basic Ways to a Healthy Microbiome Guest: Dr. Joseph Mercola The purpose of this presentation is to convey information. It is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure your condition or to be a substitute for advice from your physician or other healthcare professional. Dr. Kellman: Hello, everyone! I’m Dr. Raphael Kellman from KellmanCenter.com. I am excited to welcome you to

this amazing segment of the Microbiome Medicine Summit. The microbiome and its role in maintaining health and healing disease is one of the greatest medical discoveries in modern medicine. We are so excited to share key insights that will help you uncover the unseen root causes of your health issues. According to research, we are made up primarily of bacterial cells that control virtually every aspect of our physiology. And in this segment, as well as throughout the Summit, we will shatter the myth that bacteria are the enemy. And you will see that, in fact, these bacteria of the microbiome are actually your greatest allies when it comes to improving health. And it will enable you to activate your highest potential. With that said, let me introduce our special guest Dr. Joseph Mercola. I’m sure most of you know who he is. He’s been so passionate about healthcare and health and technology for most of his life. He is a medical doctor of osteopathic medicine—and he’s a naturopathic doctor, as well—and has treated thousands of patients for over 20 years using natural medicine and time-tested holistic treatments. He’s the founder of the Natural Health Center, formerly the Optimal Wellness Center, and the website Mercola.com, which is now the world’s most visited natural health website, averaging up to 14 million visitors monthly and with over one billion subscribers, including myself and my wife.


Dr. Mercola has authored three New York Times bestsellers, The Great Bird Flu Hoax, The No Grain Diet, and his latest book Effortless Healing. He was also voted the 2009’s Ultimate Wellness Game Changer by the Huffington Post and has been featured in Time magazine, L.A. Times, CNN, Fox News, and interviewed with Peter Jennings on ABC News. He was on the Today Show, CBS’s Washington’s Unplugged with Sharyl Attkisson, and with so many other major media resources. So let’s get started. Dr. Mercola: Well, before we get started, let me just refine some of the intro. And I thank you for your kind words. I appreciate it. But I’m a D.O., an osteopathic licensed physician. So I’m not an N.D. or a naturopath. Even though my strategies and approach are naturopathic, it’s really I’m a D.O. We’ve been the number one most visited natural health site for the last 11 years. And we have about a million viewers a day, so 30 million viewers a month. Dr. Kellman: You have an incredible wealth of knowledge. But as I said, really, Dr. Mercola, what I’m really impressed with is how you put the information together. And that’s so important because people are inundated with information. But they really need guidance in terms of how you put the information together and also what you exclude in order to really properly understand health today and the way health is evolving in the future. So, Dr. Mercola, your tagline is to “Take Control of Your Health.” And that is a major goal of yours to really empower people to help them take control of their health. If you could tell our audience, what are the main ways, the let’s say, the three or five main ways that people can take control of their health? Dr. Mercola: Well, thank you for your kind words again. I really appreciate it. I didn’t realize you were a subscriber. But I’m glad that a physician like yourself is able to take this information and spread it widely and use it with your own patients because I’ve been passionate about health for a long time—over 30 years and an absolute passion. I’m passionate about technology, too.


And I’m sure your experience is similar to mine in that the more you study, the more you get into the details and dive deep, the more you realize, it’s really very simple, the simpler it is. And so I’ve summarized health into five simple basics. Now, of course, these are just generalizations. And interestingly, they work for just about every disease. And I view these as the essential foundational elements. So whatever disease you have, you really need to integrate this into the base program. Now, of course, people are going to have fine-tuning. That’s why they need healthcare clinicians who are skilled in natural medicine like yourself. So what are those principles? First, access the sun as much as you can. It’s not dangerous like every dermatologist will tell you. And I’ll get into more details in a bit. Drink clean water. That means stopping drinking sodas. Eat real food, which is probably one of the most important things. And even though, it’s three simple words, it encompasses and embraces a far wider concepts. When you eat real food, you avoid a lot of other additives and derivatives that are put in food that can really damage your health. And the subset of that is not only eat real food, but the timing of your food is absolutely key. And I’ll talk about that in a bit. And then movement, you’ve simply got to move your body on a regular basis. And exercise is a subset of that. And then you’re not special. I’m not special. We all need eight hours of sleep a day. That’s not quite true. There’s a small subset of people, about 1 in 10,000 who have a genetic condition call advanced phase sleep syndrome. And they only need about four hours a night. But I almost guarantee you, you’re not one of those 10,000 people. You need eight hours, so get those eight hours. It’s probably without question the least appreciated of these principles I just mentioned.


So I can go into great detail in all of these. Do you have any specific questions? Dr. Kellman: Actually, one specific question. Do these same principles apply with the same importance to someone who already has a serious disease? Would there be something else that you would need to add to your list of very important suggestions? Dr. Mercola: No. No. No. That’s a great question. And I’m sure you get it all the time, too. With question and answer sessions, people will ask you their specific conditions, whether it’s rheumatoid arthritis or progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy or some other whacky autoimmune disease, they all have at a base foundation these principles. And they need to be integrated as the foundation because the core… And I am so grateful to Dr. Ron Rosedale who’s an internist and who taught me over 20 years ago. I can remember very clearly the day he taught me in a lecture, a small lecture room, about 20 of us in Chicago, of the importance of insulin resistance, which is really the core of most chronic degenerative diseases. So you got to get that control, which means eating real food. By that, you’re eliminating sugars, processed foods. And most people don’t realize. I didn’t realize until recently. Do you know that there is a loophole in the government regulations that allows the food industry to classify many of the over ten to fifty thousand food ingredients as GRAS—Generally Recognized as Safe—by making that classification. By the self-interested food industry making that classification, they can avoid having to do any human food safety testing and also do not have to put it on the label. So even though you’ve got your reading glasses and you can read the 2.5 on the list of ingredients, it won’t be there. You could look all you want. So if you eat real food, you avoid the exposure to all those potential toxins. And who knows, just one of them, what might be a problem. But the potential


synergy of combing them on a regular basis, it’s never been studied. And we know it doesn’t do anything good for your health. Dr. Kellman: Oh, I totally agree with you, the problem of insulin resistant. But also, I want to get your take on this. I think I see this clinically is that there are many people with insulin resistance and outright type II diabetes who are eating a very, very healthy diet. And they’re not overweight. And, in my opinion—and I am convinced that the research supports this is that their insulin resistance or their outright diabetes is due to endocrine disruptors and the chemicals in the environment. Would you agree with that? Dr. Mercola: Absolutely. There’s no question. So what’s the solution? Well, one of the primary inputs of endocrine disruptors would be the food you’re eating. So if you eat clean food, that’s a big issue. But then, there’s other toxic exposures like the BPA in phthalates and food containers or plastic curtains in your shower. So you’ve got to limit your exposure to plastics. That’s an important aspect. But it could be other things like sun exposure. Vitamin D deficiency is pervasive. And yes, you can take oral vitamin D. And for most people in the United States, they don’t really have any other choice in the winter other than to find a healthy tanning bed, which the government tells you not to do it. But really, you either have to swallow it or snowbird or go somewhere warm for a long time to get this. But exposure to the sun is, no question, the ultimate and absolute best way to increase your vitamin D and optimize it. Dr. Kellman: I’m been saying this for years in spite of what people are saying about this, what dermatologists say. Listen, if the sun is an integral part of nature and we are part of nature, you don’t have to be a medical doctor to figure out that the two of us need to get together: the sun and human beings. What happens when you go to medical school is that you lose your common sense. But I totally agree with you.


And there was a very interesting study that two groups…I forgot what journal it was published in. They had two groups of patients. One had exposure to the sun and the other just received vitamin D. Both groups had the same vitamin D levels. But the group that had the sun were experiencing better health than the ones who only received vitamin D, meaning the whole is more than the sum of its parts. It’s not only that the vitamin D that the sun gives us or helps us produce that makes the sun healthy for us. Dr. Mercola: There’s no question about that. And thank you bringing it up. And if we do get the sun, we need to expose it on a significant amount of your surface of your skin. So if you just go out at lunch and you have a long-sleeved shirt on and long pants and you’re just getting your hands and your face, it’s not going to make a significant difference. You need a significant amount of surface of your skin exposed. So what would be some of those other reasons? Why is the exposure to the sun better than swallowing a capsule? Well, one of them would be there’s different wavelengths. There’s 1,500 wavelengths. One of those wavelengths is the infrared wavelengths. And we know that infrared exposure actually helps structure water in your body. That’s why infrared saunas are so good for detoxing. So you don’t have to get an infrared sauna. You just go outside in the sun and get that infrared rays. And you get it yourself. So that’s probably another magnificent way. And I know many of your listeners and viewers will not be able to do that on a regular basis. I’ve structured my life so I can do that. I have not tasted or swallowed a vitamin D pill in over five or six years. But if you’re not able to do that, then you have to swallow it. Then you have to do a blood test to make sure. So there’s no way to know. It’s just like high blood pressure or blood sugar, you’re not going to be able to figure out if their abnormal unless you measure. Dr. Kellman: Right. Right. But get out in the sun. If you have 15, 20 minutes,


roll up your sleeves and sit out in the sun. Dr. Mercola: Take your shirt off! Don’t be embarrassed. If you’re a woman, of course, you have a sports bra on. We don’t want indecent public exposure. Dr. Kellman: Right. Right. So your passion is to change the paradigm of medicine. That’s so wonderful. What do you think is wrong with the current paradigm? And what is the new paradigm that you’d like to replace it with? Dr. Mercola: Well, I was going to mention it with some of the other comments you said. And I think that if you’re a rational individual and you go through school, medical school and you’re able to think this through and you have honest evaluations of the feedback your patients are giving you—remember our patients are our best teachers, although many of us forget that when we’re treating patients—but if you listen to them objectively, you’ll find the way to improve their health the most…And everything I mention reflects back on the simple principles is what I coined RAP—replicate ancestral practices—so ancestral foods, ancestral movements. What did our ancestors do hundreds of thousands of generations ago because that’s what our genes and our biochemistry and metabolism is optimized for? They weren’t optimized for what happened in the last 100 years. So when you remove yourself from that exposure, you’re not going to achieve optimal health. And the reason why most physicians don’t get that, it’s not by accident. Most doctors are incredibly bright. You got to be super smart just to even walk through the door. And then, even when you walk through the door, there’s a 20% to 30% chance you’re not going to graduate. So when you get out, you’re a bright individual. But it’s by design. Over a century ago, they had the Carnegie and the Rockefeller Foundation who had different interests other than health. They


had significant interests in the chemical industries and pharmaceuticals, they selectively removed the natural nutritional approaches out of the curriculum. So they’re not even taught for the most part in medical school except for some subset of biochemistry, typically. Dr. Kellman: So that’s the paradigm shift that’s terribly needed to get back to a more common sense approach that needs to be integrated with the high technology and all the drugs that so many people are enamored with. But, unfortunately, because doctors are so enamored with the power of technology and pharmaceutical drugs, they then automatically feel everything else is weak and insignificant in comparison. And they don’t even look down the approach of functional medicine. My niece just got into medical school. And I was talking to her about her biochemistry book. I said, “Do they teach you in biochemistry or cell biology that all these compounds like CoQ10 and PQQ and niacinamide, that you could actually use those compounds and improve cellular function and there’s research to support that?” None of that’s being taught. It’s just to know about all these compounds in the cell. And then they get on to pharmacology, what drugs to use. Dr. Mercola: Yeah, that’s just the sad reality. I am a big believer in CoQ10 or the reduced version, which I think is a higher quality because that’s the actual portion that works is ubiquinol. Why? Because it’s to force mitochondrial health. Why are mitochondria important? Well, mitochondria’s are derivatives of bacteria. They’re ancient bacteria. And each one of your cells has between 100 and 100,000 of these organelles. And what do they do? They produce your energies. When you eat food, your body metabolically and enzymatically breaks that down to the food’s fuel. It’s like fat and sugar that eventually find their way to these mitochondria. The mitochondria take that, combine it with oxygen along the electron transport train and create energy distributed through ATP.


Now, that’s important to understand. And I know you get that. But many of your people listening don’t. Why is this important? Because this is I talked about earlier about the timing of your food. Well, when you eat fuel, one of the artifacts, the byproducts of this fuel generation, it’s not terribly efficient because it makes free radicals. It produces excessive electrons. And those free radicals, you need some. But in excess, they can cause cellular damage. They can break up your cell membranes, destroy your DNA, kill your mitochondria prematurely. So what?! Here is the key. And I just realized this relatively recently. I read a book by an N.D., Lee Know about mitochondria—I think the name of the book is Life—helped me understand that one of the important principles, simple, but doesn’t cost you anything to do this, not a penny, is don’t eat food at least three hours before you go to bed. Personally, I don’t eat food for five to six hours. I think that restricting your calories to about a 6- or 8-hour window is a powerful way to address that insulin resistance I talked about earlier. But when you eat before you go to bed, you’ve got fuel your body isn’t using. And it backs up, creates all these excessive electrons and free radicals and damages your health. There is no way you need fuel when you’re sleeping like that. That’s one of the worse things you can do is eat before you go to sleep. Dr. Kellman: Right. Because you’re saying because it adversely affects the mitochondria. Dr. Mercola: Yes, because the mitochondria, they’re generating fuel that it thinks you need. Your biggest meal, and this is another hint, especially if you like to eat sweets—it’s okay to have sweets occasionally—I think the less, the better, of course. But if you’re going to have sweets, the best time to take…What is the best time to take the sweets? Your sugar hit, if you’re going to indulge in it?


Dr. Kellman: Well, probably much earlier in the day. Dr. Mercola: Well, specifically, before your biggest use of energy expenditure is going to be. So if you’re going to workout and run or do a lot of yard work and really sweat and use a lot of energy, that’s when your biggest meal should be so that you could use the energy so there’s no excess floating around causing damage. It’s a powerful simple principle. And it doesn’t cost you anything just to figure out the time you have your meals. Most of us do not need three meals a day. If you have insulin resistance, restricting your calories to a 6 to 8-hour window and especially not eating long before you go to sleep is one of the most powerful interventions that will actually help eradicate, make almost magically disappear your food cravings because that’s the big thing that prevents people from doing it. “Yeah, I got to have this food.” You don’t. You just need to get your body, you have to teach it how to burn fat again because it forgot because you’re eating all the time, especially high glycogen-producing foods. Dr. Kellman: And as you were saying, this excess energy will be converted to fat if you’re eating late at night and you don’t have use for that energy. Dr. Mercola: Well, especially, if you’re insulin resistant because your body, really there’s an impairment in the enzymes that metabolize fat from the insulin resistance so it doesn’t break it down well so it doesn’t have any other choice except to keep on adding it on. Dr. Kellman: That’s right. So this segues very well because we’re talking about how the mitochondria actually come from ancient bacteria. That we and bacteria have a very special relationship that goes back for millions or billions of years that has been totally overlooked. And, in fact, we’ve actually always thought that bacteria are the bad guys. But in the last 10 years, there’s been what I feel is one of the greatest, if not


the greatest scientific turnarounds in the last 150 years from thinking of bacteria as the bad guy to now changing that conception 180 degrees that bacteria is the ultimate good guy. This is the whole topic of the microbiome. And I see, Dr. Mercola, that that’s something very, very important for you. And that’s why we reached out to you because I feel in you that this is something that you think is a very, very important topic. And that it’s going to really change the face of medicine in the near future. Could you comment on that? Dr. Mercola: Oh, sure. Your gut is your second brain. Most of your neurotransmitters are actually stored and produced in your gut. So it has an enormous influence on how you feel—anxiety, depression—risk taking all these medications so you control it, when all you needed to do is improve your gut. But interestingly, we talked about eating real food. It is one of the most important things. Less processed, organic, locally grown, the highest quality food you can possibly get. What does that do? When you do that, you avoid the bad stuff. So when you eat bad food, the processed foods, the sugars, it goes in there. And there’s only so much space in your gut. You can only hold so many bacteria back there. So when you fertilize it with bad material, you get the pathogenic yeast, bacteria, fungi, viruses, bacteriophages that should not be there. These are pathogenic disease-causing microbes, which will negatively influence your health. When you eat the good food, you suppress their growth and you encourage the good guys. So that’s just by your diet, you have enormous influence on what you’re eating. And you can radically change this. And interestingly, there’s lots of studies that show the influence of these microbes on, not only brain health, but obesity and developmental disorders, autism. There’s a lot of rat and animal studies where they give these microbes and specific bacteria that were prevalent in obese mice, they implant them


into lean mice. And the lean mice become obese. And they do the converse and it works out, the obese mice become lean. So it’s all about influencing the gut. That really is the key. And we’ve known about this. I forget the name of the researcher. That was over a century ago. He was a Russian researcher, I believe. Dr. Kellman: Mesnekoff. Dr. Mercola: Mesnekoff. Yes. He’s the classic guy. He did the research. I was fascinated with this. Over 30 years ago, I read some of his work. I said I understood it. But we didn’t have the technology to really go into this. And the researchers weren’t doing it. But you’re right. In the last 10 years, largely because of the advent of the genetic sequencing, DNA analysis to figure out what these microbes are. You can sequence your gut microbes now for under $100 and figure out precisely what’s growing in your gut. Dr. Kellman: Dr. Mercola, what wasn’t appreciated years ago was the vastness of the microbiome, of the gut bacteria, that they outnumber us 10:1. We are mostly gut bacteria. This idea, this concept just evolved over the last decade. Dr. Mercola: It’s even worse than that because they outnumber us 10 to 1. But actually, it’s 100 to 1 because there’s bacteriophages that outnumber the bacteria 10 to 1. So there’s a quadrillion microbes in our gut. And there’s only 10 trillions of cells that we have. Dr. Kellman: And they have many more. And also, the amount of genetics, the total number of genes that the bacteria supply is 150 times what our genome supplies.


Dr. Mercola: At least, we’re waking up. We’re starting to understand it. The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know. Dr. Kellman: Ah! I love it. Absolutely. Dr. Mercola: If you’re wise and objective and you’re honest, of course, a lot of people who are in medicine, the longer they get, the more arrogant they get and don’t understand this principle. At least then, that’s been my observation. Dr. Kellman: I totally agree. And listen, I think it was Solomon who said is, “You know that the beginning of wisdom is awe and wonder, a fear of the Lord.” Right? Dr. Mercola: Yeah. And not only, at least in Biblical terms, identified as the wisest man in the world, but he was also the wealthiest man in the world. Dr. Kellman: Right. Right. Listen, intelligence could create wealth, as well, right. But let me ask you this. What do you think is the main health issue that, what I call microbiome medicine, can positively affect, that can really make a difference? Dr. Mercola: Well, the truthful answer to that…Well, I guess you said the most positive, so it would be a specific one. But I really believe it has an impact on virtually every single health issue. There’s just no question about it in my mind. But if you were to target it to a specific group, I’d obviously have to answer that the gut diseases like colon cancer and irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease and peptic ulcer. So that’s going to have the most immediate impact. But it has an influence on every disease. There’s no question in my mind. Dr. Kellman: And what would be the first step that you would tell people to do to improve the microbiome and to improve their gut.


Dr. Mercola: Easy, easy answer to that. And I’m not sure what yours is. And I’m really unequivocal about this. You have got to take your foot off the gas pedal. What does that mean?! It means, you cannot feed the pathogenic yeast, bacteria, and fungi. You’ve got to stop eating sugar. You can take the hundreds of trillions, quadrillions of beneficial microbes. If you’re eating sugar, it’s like trying to stop your car with your foot on the gas pedal. It doesn’t work. You’ve got to stop sugar. Dr. Kellman: Now, would you say eating a piece of bread, even whole wheat bread, would that be on the list of eating sugar? Dr. Mercola: No. It’s different. And bread can be a useful food for some people—healthy whole wheat bread, organic, of course. But for most people is if you’re suffering from a chronic health challenge, one of the first interventions I recommend is to stop all gluten because gluten is a protein that’s in wheat and other grains that can cause many gut problems and many other health problems. So it’s wise to avoid that. But once you’ve ruled that out…And there are blood tests that you can do that, too. But it’s probably best to do a clinical intervention or trial just to exclude that from your diet. So I think it’s probably not a wise idea to eat wheat for most people. There are people who can eat it and do perfectly fine, however. Dr. Kellman: Well, what about, let’s say oats. Let’s say gluten-free oats for breakfast or oatmeal. Would you consider that a high-sugar food? Dr. Mercola: Well, it has other issues. Oats is particularly high phytic acid, which can bind minerals. And I liked oatmeal. When I was growing up, that was one of my biggest…Initially, it was Life cereal when I didn’t know any better because I did not come from a healthy family. I love them. But they were just clueless about nutrition. And then, I gradually progressed to eating unprocessed rolled oats. I don’t even think they were organic at the time.


Although, that was in the 70s or 80s, so they probably weren’t that many non-organic oats. But I’m not convinced that it’s a super healthy food. It tends to be more processed. And it’s not really a Paleolithic or ancestral food for the most part. So if you follow that principle, it’s not that oats can be never be eaten, it’s just not one of the healthier foods. You’re far better off having fruit. Not fruit juice, but fruit, because fruit juice is just like sugar. Dr. Kellman: What about orange juice? Are you against natural-squeezed orange juice? Dr. Mercola: Well, if it’s freshly squeezed, it’s probably okay. But 99% of the juice that you’re going to drink is not freshly squeezed. I literally have three dozen. Actually, I have probably five or six dozen fruit trees and about three dozen citruses. It’s mostly tangerines on my property that I consume regularly. Well, look, I’ll talk about that later when we have some of the other questions. But it’s best to grow them or at least get them organic and locally grown if you can’t grow them yourself. And I live in Florida, so I can grow citrus because it survives in the winter. Dr. Kellman: Okay. So removing sugar is step number one to improve your gut and your microbiome. That’s Dr. Mercola’s position. And I absolutely agree with you. One of the things that we find clinically is that a lot of people have significant bacterial overgrowth. In my book The Microbiome Diet, I didn’t focus enough on the fact that a lot of people have significant bacterial overgrowth. And you have to first, before you can even introduce even the microbiome diet—meaning the use of foods that contain a lot of the prebiotics like inulin or arabinogalactans that’s found in jicama and the Jerusalem artichokes, etcetera—that first to focus a bit more on removing the unfriendly bacteria.


And, in my opinion, in order to do that—I wanted to get your take on this—the best way is to remove all grains, even the non-gluten grains and also for many people, even the legumes, unless you soak them. But even then, I tell people, “For one month, if you have significant bloating and if you happen to come into our office and we diagnose you with bacterial overgrowth with a breath test, then spend at least one month in removing all those foods that are going to cause the unfriendly bacterial overgrowth. And that includes all grains.” So what would you say is the second most important step to improve the microbiome? Dr. Mercola: Well, I think probably is to eat real food because by doing that, you’re really optimally nourishing your gut flora. But as a subset of that, I think it’s really important to eat fermented foods. And when I mentioned earlier the importance of vitamin D, what I didn’t mention is if you’re going to swallow oral vitamin D, especially in the large doses you need to get over 50 nanograms per milliliter, you’re really doing yourself a massive disservice if you’re not taking vitamin K2, not K1. There’s a big difference. K2. What does K2 do? It actually sucks the calcium out of the lining of the blood vessels so that you prevent and actually reverse atherosclerosis—one of the leading contributors to cardiovascular diseases—and it plugs it back into your bones where it’s supposed to be so you get stronger, denser bones so you don’t get osteoporosis, break your hip, and die a few months later when you get older. So that’s another important thing. And I would definitely take it with K2, about 150 micrograms. Now, K2 is expensive as a supplement. If you find fermented foods—and fermented vegetables specifically—you can get clinically significant amounts of vitamin K2 for free. I personally think fermenting your vegetables is a wise strategy because you could pay maybe $20 or $30 for a quart of them in the health food store. Or you can do them yourself for like literally under a dollar, for free almost.


And it’s not that hard to do. It’s not like you’re going to create a science experiment that’s going to kill yourself and your family. It’s pretty easy and simple. And if you do a special culture, we’ve created one called Kinetic Culture that actually has high strains that produce even significantly more, maybe 10 times the amount of vitamin K2. So K2 I think is massively important. It has almost every single benefit that vitamin D does. And it works synergistically with it. It actually helps prevent vitamin D toxicity. But it works hand in hand with vitamin D to give you all those massive benefits. And the reason why it’s not well known like vitamin D is we don’t have a test for vitamin K2. I’m working right now with Quest Labs to try to change that. But with these multinational tens of billion dollar companies, it’s just like turning the titanic to get them to do something. So it’s a long, slow, tedious process. But I’m hoping that we’ll get that available soon so that clinicians can start using this. And the study’s being done in support. And that becomes massively incorporated like they are doing with vitamin D. Dr. Kellman: Sure. Now, Dr. Mercola, what are your thoughts about prebiotic foods? And is that part of your recommendation? Dr. Mercola: Yeah. I’m a big fan of eating lots of unprocessed raw foods whenever possible, especially the vegetables. The vegetables are huge. So they come intrinsically with them. In a wide variety of vegetables, you’re going to get your prebiotics. I don’t particularly use them strategically as a supplement, prebiotics, because I think you can do it with the diet. But I’m sure there’s cases where it’s warranted. Dr. Kellman: To actually take prebiotics as a supplement? Dr. Mercola: Yeah, I think you can get them from your foods.


Dr. Kellman: Yeah, but there are some foods that are higher in the prebiotics that can consistently help your friendly bacteria flourish like Jerusalem artichokes and jicama. Dr. Mercola: Yeah. Yeah. I take a soluble fiber supplement like psyllium because, especially with respect to gut health, when you get these soluble fibers, they break down the short-chain fatty acids, specifically butyric acid or butyrate. And they actually nourish the cells in your colon and help them produce mucin to protect the lining so it prevents something like leaky gut. Really important for colonic health. Dr. Kellman: And you can take butyrate as a supplement, as well, I find. Dr. Mercola: If you have like ulcerative colitis or something, you can do butyrate enemas. But I think it’s probably better to do it more naturally. Dr. Kellman: Absolutely. Now, let’s talk about it for a few minutes about the targeted use of probiotics to improve various health conditions. I see that more and more research now is focusing on certain specific probiotics, certain types of bacteria that seem to be helpful with specific diseases. So for example, with obesity and weight loss, science has isolated two particular strands of bacteria. I’m sure there are many more. And I’m sure they work in synergy. But one was acidophilus rhamnosus. There was also another one, gasseri—acidophilus gasseri. And now, with neurological health, there are a number of different types of probiotics that have been identified that seem to help with depression and anxiety. Personally, I’m split. I believe it’s very, very important to deal with the foundation as you’re saying. But I also feel that there is a role for targeted probiotics after the foundation is well established. I’m curious about what your take is on this?


Dr. Mercola: Well, I would encourage you to exercise some caution on the interpretation of the studies because being an insider and actually having a company that sells supplements, I know some of the details in that a lot of times these studies come up promoting this one and proving it. Well, it doesn’t mean the others don’t work as you alluded to. It just means that someone’s decided to spend tens or hundreds of thousands dollars to do the study that they’ve showed the results. That doesn’t mean someone did studies on the others and showed it didn’t work. They just haven’t been done yet. So I think you have to be careful in making that interpretation. I think I’d encourage generally that colonic health is probably going to be the wisest strategy. And I think fermented foods is the ideal way to do your population. Because I became interested in this after following…And I’m sure you’re familiar with Natasha Campbell-McBride—phenomenal—the GAPS diet, which is a real specific strategy for people who have severe allergies to improve gut health. It’s just I’ve seen it literally save at least a half a dozen people’s lives that I know personally that I’ve mentored them through in using that. So it’s a powerful intervention. But that’s where I first became sensitized to the use of fermented foods. So I’ve decided to study it. And we did the analysis. And that in like two to three ounces of fermented vegetables that are optimally fermented, you’re going to have over 100 trillion bacteria. One hundred trillion, that’s like a whole bottle of a high-quality high-potency probiotics. So I think you’re going to get your best value, your best bang for your buck by using fermented foods. And if for whatever reason, you can’t or don’t want to do that, then, of course, take a targeted supplement. What I have learned from clinical experience is that one specific type of bacterial strain may not work. You got to try a lot of different ones. And sometimes, it’s these unusual ones, these soil-based organisms. Or SPO’s, as they’re called. They’re sometimes helpful. Sometimes it’s like the


saccharomyces boulardi that are useful. So you have to play with them. But that’s unusual. Those are the exceptions. I’m talking about most people don’t need to go down that path. They can just benefit from a shotgun broad approach. It’s not only going to improve their gut flora, but improve all their health, and to decrease these chronic degenerative diseases that we’re all exposed to, and they don’t have to die prematurely from Alzheimer’s. Fifty percent of the people have diabetes, fifty percent. It’s so terrible. And they’re related because we’re looking at Alzheimer’s as type 3 diabetes. When you have insulin resistance, it destroys your health. So these principles work for everything though. Dr. Kellman: Absolutely. All diseases have a common origin, by and large, of chronic diseases. Dr. Mercola: Right. Absolutely. Dr. Kellman: Explain to all of us, the connection between the gut and the microbiome and neurological health and how improving the gut and improving the microbiome can, to a great degree, prevent Alzheimer’s? Dr. Mercola: Well, there are more connections from your gut to your brain than the other way around. That’s one of the reasons they call our gut our second brain. As I mentioned earlier, it has enormous amounts of serotonin and other neurotransmitters that are actually produced by your gut. Dr. Kellman: By bacterial cells, they’re producing these neurotransmitters. Dr. Mercola: That’s where it is. It’s in your gut. It’s not in your brain. It’s in your gut. Dr. Kellman: Gut feelings are real. It’s not poetry.


Dr. Mercola: Believe me, as I said earlier, the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know because I am absolutely convinced that this is just the tip of the iceberg. And then, in 100 years and 200 years, we’ll know it’s so much so far more complex than our superficial understanding. But it just goes back to that doesn’t mean you get overwhelmed and say, “Ah, I’ll just give up.” No, you just follow ancestral practices, do it right. Don’t follow what your friends and neighbors are doing and relatives, follow what your ancient relatives were doing. Your ancient ancestors, follow their movement patterns, their sleep patterns, bacteria, foods—you’ve got to do those things—clean water, stay away from toxins. And when you do that, your health just improves automatically. There’s no science involved. Its just an automatic reflex. Dr. Kellman: So do you feel that the microbiome research and the fact that the research about the microbiome is showing us that in order to improve the brain or to improve the heart or to improve organs that are seemingly disconnected to the gut and the microbiome, we actually have to improve the gut and microbiome. Will this change the way doctors understand health and healing? Dr. Mercola: I hope it will. Especially with some of the DNA sequencing that’s going on, so they have a better appreciation, and the study’s come out to support that, they’ll realize that. But science and large disciplines change relatively slowly. So it may take a while. It may take another generation because there’s these vested interests that are highly conflicted and have enormous influence over powerful federal regulatory agencies and that dictate policies, and then the media, of course. So there’s a lot of negative impacts that we have to overcome. And that’s one of my missions in life is to…Because I realize after a while that just explaining to people what to do wasn’t sufficient by itself because there’s


these barriers to staying healthy that a lot of people aren’t aware of. And they are unable to address. Dr. Kellman: Look, I’ll tell you what I think and tell me what your thoughts are about this. If more and more research starts to pour in about how improving gut bacteria, you can see an improvement in brain health, that will shatter the way we understand health and healing because if we have a brain issue, we were taught focus on the brain, change the neurotransmitters. And now we’re seeing, wait a minute, we’re seeing great results by tweaking gut function. And now the brain is getting better. This flies in the face of the conventional way of understanding how we heal. Dr. Mercola: Yes, it does. But something even as simpler as stopping sugar, which not only improves gut health, but has far more pervasive results and impacts on your health, is still challenged and not widely adopted or accepted by traditional medicine because of these conflicted interests that I referenced earlier. So it’s a much broader issue. And I couldn’t agree more. It’s obvious. If you’re rational and if you’re non-biased and you’re non-conflicted, and you’re willing to and sincerely seeking the truth, there’s no other rational conclusion that you could reach that this is the approach to take. But that’s unfortunately, we have to battle these forces that are pushing us the other way, not because of different beliefs that they feel are going to help our health, but because it’s affecting their pocketbooks. Dr. Kellman: Dr. Mercola, what are you doing to combat that? Is there something that you’re doing that’s going up against that force? Dr. Mercola: Well, about five years ago, or four or five years ago, I realized that…I’ve been doing my website for almost 20 years. And I’ve been educating people. We have literally 10 million unique visitors every month that visit our site. And we’re teaching them these principles. But what I realized four or five years ago is that it’s not just about teaching. That we have to play an activist


role, to be a leader to erase some of these challenges. And the most classic one is these GMO foods, which we know have contained Roundup, which is actually more pernicious than it’s main ingredient glyphosate. Glyphosate has been shown to decimate your gut microbes. That’s one of the ways it works. It destroys your gut microbes, your gut health. And anyone who’s been following this issue knows that there’s this massive controversy over that that really wasn’t a controversy until we brought it to the pubic four years ago with the Direct Ballot Initiative in California, which failed. We lost the vote. But we increased consciousness about this. And the reason we did this that is to label GMOs, let people know. Because right now, people have no clue that the food they’re buying contains GMOs, which is ruin their gut health and have all these adverse secondary health consequences down the road. So that’s one area. We’re also working on getting mercury out of dentistry. We’ve made massive improvements in that, fluoride out of the water, educating people about the importance of vaccine safety. And the recent one we’re going to acquire is about biosolids. It’s a term that most people aren’t familiar with. But essentially, over half the municipalities in the U.S. take their human sewage waste and they combine it with industrial waste, process it, concentrate the toxins like 100,000 times. And sell it as, get this, organic fertilizer that you buy at Home Depot or Lowe’s. Or worse yet, they put on industrial farms that loads them with things like arsenic and all these other industrial toxins that goes right into the food you’re eating. So the average person can’t do anything about this. So what I perceive our role is to be an activist, a leader to educate them and spearhead efforts to change those policies that are typically due to these massive corruption and conflicts


of interest that penetrates the very core of our federal regulatory agencies to allow these pernicious practices to persist. Dr. Kellman: And one last question, Dr. Mercola. How do you see the future of microbiome research and general implications of the research about the microbiome in the near future? You see it making a big change in a particular area of health? Dr. Mercola: I’m not sure. It’s not an area that I study real carefully. So I’m sure there’ll be some improvements. I think there’s probably others that may surpass it and other technologies that will then integrate. One of my passions is life extension to live to be older than 120, which I think is possible through the use of these emerging technologies like nanotechnology and stem cell revision. So I think integrating that. But the assumption for the success of those strategies is that you have the basics right. You have to optimize everything I mentioned earlier. Dr. Kellman: Before you add all those things. Dr. Mercola: Yeah. Dr. Kellman: Yeah. Dr. Mercola: Yeah. And I think that the artifact of some of these other technologies will be integrated into some of the microbiome research. And we’ll see phenomenal things when you can actually get in there and target specific microbes. So we’ve got the tools now to do the assessment. But again, I mentioned these bacteriophages. Who knows the importance of these bacteriophages? We haven’t even characterized those. And they outnumber the bacteria 10 to 1. So there’s so much that the more you know, the more you don’t know.


But it all boils down to one simple principle. And I want to emphasize that. And it is eat real food. If you can remember one thing is that eat real food. Timing is important. Don’t eat before you go to bed. Get movement. Get exposure to sun. Get eight hours of sleep a night. You do those things, you’re going to make a massive shift towards activating the switches in your body that will automatically get you healthy. Dr. Kellman: This is a great way to end, Dr. Mercola. And those five so important principles, I’m definitely going to help get that word out. And I think the more of us that do these types of segments, the more people will learn about these fundamental principles of healing. Dr. Mercola: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And I’m delighted that you really went above your classmates and probably your local medical community and really an outcast probably for recognizing the truth and applying that and being honest and taking a rational approach because it works. And I want to thank you for your input in this. We can’t do this alone. We have to get together. And fortunately, there’s an emerging number of people like you who are physicians who understand the truth and have the courage to take this approach and not worry about what their colleagues are going to [inaudible]. Dr. Kellman: Well, thank you, Dr. Mercola. And for all of you listening, thank you again for joining the Microbiome Medicine Summit! According to research, we are mostly bacterial cells that govern our health. These bacteria actually outnumber our human cells 10 to 1. So we must learn to take care of our microbiome. So with this information, we can tap in to their power to heal us. Please, please, please take this groundbreaking revolutionary information home with you by clicking on the banner beside or below and be sure to share with your family and friends. This is Dr. Raphael Kellman! And I wish all of you an abundant and healthy life! Thank you for being part of this microbiome revolution!

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