Youthful Aging Secrets Podcast
Join Ricardo Vasquez who inspired by the death of his dad, Ricardo Luis Vasquez, decided to do his best to optimize his health and share what he's learning and doing with anyone who wants to do the same. Interviewing experts in their respective fields like Doctors, scientists, and others in the health space plus "super agers". People who are aging gracefully and look, feel and/or perform way below their age. My job is simple, to dissect the habits, rituals, routines, wisdom and knowledge from my guests as best I can. I really hope this makes a difference in your life.
Youthful Aging Secrets Podcast
#7 Doctor Warns: Gut Health Is More Important Than You Think- With Dr. Christine Bishara
In Episode 7 of Youthful Aging Secrets, Dr. Christine Bishara unveils groundbreaking insights into gut health and its critical role in boosting longevity, strengthening the immune system, and promoting youthful aging. Discover how the microbiome holds the power to prevent autoimmune diseases and enhance your healthspan. Whether you're curious about the hidden benefits of probiotics or eager to unlock the secrets of a longer, healthier life, this episode is packed with actionable strategies that could transform your wellness journey. Don't miss out—listen now and start your path to thriving health!
How to Find Dr. Christine Bishara:
🌐 Website: https://fromwithinmedical.com/
📘 Facebook: / doctorchristineb
📸 Instagram: / doctorchristineb
📚 Get Dr. Christine Bishara's Book:
The Gut Revolution: Change Your Gut, Change Your Life
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Welcome to Youthful Aging Secrets Podcast. I'm your host, Ricardo Vazquez, and today I'm excited to introduce to you Dr. Christine Beshara. She's a board certified internal medicine physician with over 20 years of experience. Dr. Beshara is the founder of From Within Medical. A wellness practice that emphasizes the powerful connection between the gut, brain, and immune system. She's a published researcher who made a groundbreaking discovery linking gut health to disease severity, and she's also the author of The Gut Revolution. In this episode, you can expect to learn what gut health is and why it's crucial for overall well being. How to test your gut health and what signs to look for, proven strategies to improve your gut health, the difference between good and bad bacteria and why it matters, effective protocols for gut health, including fasting, what foods to eat and which to avoid, and the pushback that Dr. Beshara received from the medical community, despite publishing groundbreaking research on why children weren't as severely affected as adults during the pandemic and so much more. I really enjoyed our conversation and I think you will too. Thank you. Now, before we dive into today's episode, I want to quickly tell you about my free Five Health Hacks newsletter. It's perfect for busy people who want to live as healthy as possible for as long as possible but don't have the time to catch every episode or read all the studies. Every Monday, I send out a quick snapshot. of the podcast episode summaries, best health tips, research highlights, and insights to keep you on track. To find out more, just head over to youthfulagingsecrets. com forward slash subscribe. Let's get it. All right, Dr. Christine Bishara, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. so why don't we start off by telling us, me, our guests, our listeners. what's your background? What do you do, your specialty and kind of how you got here? I'll let you take it away.
Dr Christine Bishara:So I'm a medical doctor. My background is internal medicine and I love internal medicine, but I also love nutrition and gut health even more. Dr. Bishara. And I didn't really find that I was able to discuss that with my patients. And I think we all have a gift that we need to kind of use to help others and everyone's gift is different. And I just felt like traditional mainstream medicine was not really where my gift of sharing my passion is. So I kind of like left traditional medicine and then I opened a wellness and weight loss practice where I focus on gut health and nutrition and teach my patients to do that. And it's always really, affirming when they find that really the simple things are what makes them feel healthy.
Ricardo Vasquez:So how long have you been focused on gut health?
Dr Christine Bishara:Officially like six years. I've been a doctor for. 25 years. But I've always been talking to people about nutrition and gut health
Ricardo Vasquez:So in your training as a medical doctor, for example, you said you could really talk to your patients about their gut health. Is it because you weren't allowed to, or is it, you just limited on time when you see a patient that's kind of in and out?
Dr Christine Bishara:Yeah. It's really more about time. You know, we have to go through so many different things, you know, like screenings and things like that. But what I kind of noticed time and time and again with patients is I didn't really have time to talk to them about nutrition at all. And people were just hungry for that information and we just didn't have enough time to address all those issues with the other stuff that we're kind of, required to do. So, and like I said before, I think we're all kind of put on this earth to share what we're really passionate about. And so I was like, you know what, this isn't really where I feel like I'm best being utilized.
Ricardo Vasquez:Well, I'm happy to hear you have a practice. You seem like you're very passionate about, so that's really awesome. And we can get more into that. So I want to, I want to segment to, I know you have a book coming out. So I wanted to get that out and I'm excited. And I just wanted to know if you could kind of give me a little bit of overview as to why you have the book to begin with, and what motivated you to do that?
Dr Christine Bishara:So the book's called the gut revolution and I purposely picked that name, because I feel like we really do need to have a revolution in terms of our health, in terms of our diet, people are just getting sicker and sicker. The cancer rates are higher. Autoimmune rates are higher and things as simple as the gut are what really people need to learn about. So the gut revolution, I never really thought about writing a book until after the pandemic. I was very naive, before COVID hit, but, what I found during COVID, early in COVID was that we have the best medicine cabinet in our gut and it's called beneficial bacteria. And there's all these trillions of organisms living in our gut that help us and help our immune system. And people aren't aware of that. And so really the gut revolution was born out of the fact that I need to put gut health and these organisms that live inside of us out there for everyone to see and everyone to know about because they are really helping us a lot with our immune health.
Ricardo Vasquez:I've heard the term gut microbiome, gut health, these kinds of things. What exactly does that even mean? What is the gut microbiome
Dr Christine Bishara:We have these organisms that live within us, there's trillions of them, there's all these different species, some are good, some are bad, and the way that I kind of describe it in the book is, think of them as like employees, and you're feeding them foods that they like to eat because what they like to eat, the beneficial ones anyway, produces amazing byproducts. they're regulating things like our brain health, they're regulating our immune system. And so depending on what you eat, it feeds either the bad ones or the good ones. My book is really to teach people about how to feed them because you're eating for trillions. You're not just eating for one. How to feed them so that they can produce the best byproducts for you, which is a healthy immune system, healthy mental health, cognitive function, all these really amazing things. So we can talk a little bit more specifically about how they affect each system. Like the immune system, for example.
Ricardo Vasquez:So you said you were either feeding the good ones and you're feeding the bad ones or maybe both. So I just want to go deeper into that. How do we feed the good and the bad, for example? And maybe some examples of food or I would imagine alcohol is probably not the greatest thing or something like that.
Dr Christine Bishara:So if you think about alcohol, like rubbing alcohol, right, or hand sanitizer has alcohol in it, right? So why do we use it? We like rubber hands to kill off. Bacteria, right? To kill off bad bacteria. Well, when you're drinking alcohol, it's kind of doing the same thing in your gut. You're killing off these beneficial microbes and we need them. We really need them to help us. So they like certain foods. They need certain foods. did you ever wonder why, certain vegetables have, fibers in them called inulin? Maybe you don't know that, but there's a fiber called inulin, just one example, in vegetables that we can't digest. Like, we, it just goes out in the stool. We're not able to digest it, but guess who benefits from it? The beneficial gut microbes actually feed on fiber rich foods like inulin. Inulin is one of them. Other ones are resistant starch. So when we eat foods that have those, we're literally feeding them what they need. So when they take those products, the fibers, they produce these byproducts called postbiotics. so you have prebiotics, probiotics, and postbiotics. Prebiotics are the actual foods like in the fiber and vegetables and plant based foods. So those are what you're eating. Probiotics are the actual organisms, right? So they're actually eating those prebiotics, feeding on them and then producing these wonderful byproducts called postbiotics. So in order for them to produce postbiotics, we have to feed them the prebiotics that they like. So examples of this are like inulin rich fibers include foods like garlic, onion. Raw onions are cooked, asparagus is very rich in inulin fibers, artichokes are really rich in that. So you have to give a variety of these plant based foods that they like to feed on and then they absorb what they can from there and they make these postbiotics. Now what are postbiotics? What is that? They can include vitamins. They can include neurotransmitters, they can include all these byproducts that really help our body to remain healthy. conversely, we can eat foods that the harmful bacteria like to feed on and these are processed foods and other not healthy foods like refined carbohydrates, which stay in our gut for longer periods. So when we eat too much of those foods. We're feeding the bad bacteria and when the bad bacteria grow and thrive and kind of outnumber the good bacteria, this is where we start going into health problems because if you think about good bacteria, they're almost like soldiers kind of on the front line of your inside of your intestines and the more that die and then the bad bacteria kind of replace those positions, the lining gets weak because the bad bacteria don't really work very, very efficiently. And so once the lining gets weak and the inside of your gut it starts to leak out into your immune system. And, unfortunately your immune system's really smart, but it might be too smart for its own good because it starts to detect things that it's never seen before, right? If your, gut is now leaking toxins that the good bacteria were helping prevent that release of, then your immune system starts to say, Hey, I've never seen this stuff. What is this? I need to protect myself. And this is where we start going into autoimmune diseases and chronic inflammation because our immune system is actually too smart that it will react in a way that, protects itself and that protection means that it increases inflammation because inflammation in short term is actually helpful for us. And once that inflammation starts, that's the cascade of all these issues that we have.
Ricardo Vasquez:Yeah, that's a lot. I've never heard of, post biotics before. So this is the first time. That's very interesting. How do they know that we have good and bad bacteria? And then also, how do we know what foods? Feed the good and feed the bad.
Dr Christine Bishara:Gut science is fairly new, but it's not that new. And so we've had, gut analysis where we look at the stool of people. based on their DNA, we can actually, tell now what strains of bacteria they have, the number of strains, the diversity of the strains. And just from research, we know that certain bacteria are bad, like a lot of people have heard of E. coli. I mean, that's a normal, bacteria. It's part of our gut flora, so it's not necessarily bad to have, but it really kind of depends on the ratios. The ratios are what's really important. And so, we've seen just kind of from all this research that we've done is a certain, certain strains of, organisms are beneficial and certain ones are not. And we see that from gut analysis that we do with, with patients. The technology has gotten really good now that, we can literally detect all these strains and, and, and say, you know, these strains are associated more with, increased likelihood of colon cancer, for example, or these strains may put you more at risk for inflammatory bowel disease. And so the technology has gotten really good. We just don't know. everything we need to know about the microbiome. And I don't know if we ever will, but that's how we find out. And then we just look at, you know, in different studies, we look at the correlation of, Oh, you know what? These people have a lot higher levels of this bad bacteria. And then we find that those people are actually developing colon cancer at a higher rate. For example, conversely, you could look at children who have an interesting gut microbiome composition because. their microbiome looks very different from adults and they have a very high percentage of a beneficial bacteria called bifidobacterium. And believe it or not, about 60 to 80 percent of their gut is that one bacteria. So people do research on that, bacteria. Why do they, why do kids have so much of that? Well, we realized that it's a very potent immune regulator and it regulates inflammatory pathways and it's very protective of the immune system. And so I believe that. The whole point is you guys like children have this one bacteria much higher levels in adults because it's God's way or nature's way of kind of ensuring that their immunity is strong when they're young and they haven't really developed an adaptive immune system. And oddly enough, that's what protected kids from COVID severity is this one beneficial bacteria.
Ricardo Vasquez:So you published, I think you were one of the first papers that were published on the severity of COVID in relation to children and why they didn't. Get as bad symptoms and even, you know, death, et cetera.
Dr Christine Bishara:Yeah. So, you know, it's interesting cause, I live in New York City and COVID hit New York pretty early. And, so my practice, remember everybody was like, Oh, if you're non essential, you're shut down. So my practice was a wellness and weight loss practice. So I was shut down. my husband's an ICU physician and he had the opposite effect. Like they were like, you guys are like front liners, right? So he was kind of stressed onto the front line and I, the opposite effect. I had a little more time on my end. So he was, coming home, we were talking about his patients and how certain people were getting like a lot more sick than others. and he was telling me, you know, it's strange because we have these patients who really don't have any medical problems, but they're getting really sick and the only risk factors they have is they're overweight. And so he said, we're trying these new medications that are helping and they're anti inflammatory medications and they work on specific inflammatory markers? And I said, yeah, they actually do. It's interleukin six, by the way, is that one inflammatory marker that kind of drives that initial reaction in the body to COVID. And so I kind of just started thinking, well, I wonder why kids aren't really getting sick. So we started doing some research on children's guts. And we found that they have very high levels of this bacteria. But the more we started digging, the more we started linking the two together is this bacteria actually down regulates those specific pathways. Like why did they get really sick? It's because the body responds in a way where it's hyper inflammatory and that hyper inflammation is what actually causes damage and what makes them even sicker. And so what we found was bifidobacterium down regulates those specific pathways. So in children when they get COVID, their body doesn't even have a chance to mount this inflammation. Bifidobacterium immediately down regulate those pathways. we published a study. It was the first one and we were so excited about getting this out because all the patients that we were giving this treatment protocol to, which is high dose probiotics with bifidobacterium, zinc And vitamin D, did not lose one patient. And I had all these people that were, really sick that I treated them with this protocol and they did well. so we wanted to share this study and nobody wanted to hear about it. It was like we were recommending rat poison as a treatment.
Ricardo Vasquez:Yeah, there was a lot of that going on, People, podcasts are being banned and to me, it's like the flow of information should continue to flow and, people need to do their due diligence and we're not allowed to have an opinion but these are legitimate experts like yourself who are saying, Hey, look, I'm treating my patients with this and it's having success and nobody seems to be listening. So that kind of pisses me off, you know?
Dr Christine Bishara:Yeah. It's interesting that you mentioned that because, it was the same thing. We were like, okay, we found something that. And we had the science, we had a peer reviewed scientific published study and they wouldn't even entertain the opportunity to discuss it. And it wasn't just me, it was me, three other colleagues, scientists and, and doctors. And, you know, the whole point of science is to establish a hypothesis, and go through those steps. And I felt like we weren't able to do that. Now, speaking of ivermectin, the doctor who started using ivermectin also, was extremely frustrated because he was finding that it was very effective. in his patients and helping them also cope with COVID. He was finding the same thing. But interestingly enough, now four years later, we know a lot more and there are a lot of studies coming out on bifidobacterium that link the deficiencies. We've seen a lot of clinical trials, but interestingly enough about ivermectin. There's a doctor that did a study on the mechanism of action of ivermectin in the gut and how it helps with COVID. we initially thought that the reason why it was helping was it was also working on these same inflammatory pathways and downregulating them. But the actual, findings in that study was that ivermectin was increasing bifidobacterium levels in the gut, and that's why it was helping. So it's a very old medication. It's used for parasitic infections, and apparently the mechanism of action, one of them is to actually get rid of the parasites, but it's also to increase the levels and production of this one bacteria that we're talking about. So it all kind of links, it all goes back to the gut. and I think we've become a society where we're more interested in quick fixes. Instead of actually digging deep and realizing that our body has these amazing healing, powers and our gut is very, very powerful. So that's my goal. That's why I wrote the book
Ricardo Vasquez:I used to be very much as a controversial, or not controversial, sorry. conspiracy theories and all that. And to the point where I wasn't even willing to hear the other side of things. Now I'm, I think I'm a little bit more in the middle because there's a lot of nonsense too, when it comes to conspiracy theories. And so the problem is people will use that as an example. And the moment you have a conspiracy theory, they're like, oh, you're crazy. But if you look, it's like, well, it seems to me like a lot of the influence behind these decisions as to whether or not they, Allow you to publish a study or even use the information within it seems to be profit driven.
Dr Christine Bishara:I mean, like I said, I was very naive before 2020 and what I saw. And then when I talked to other doctors and we discussed what they saw, it's not conspiracy theory. There was definitely an agenda to block any information that related to a non profitable treatment. And, you know, I'm coming out and saying this because our study was the first one, but it definitely wasn't the last one that links this bacteria to the gut. In fact, ironically, just after the vaccines rolled out, a study came out. In China, a big study that was published in the British Medical Journal about, comparing patients, stool samples in the ICU versus those who weren't as sick. And those were, the ones in the ICU had much higher levels of bifidobacterium than the rest. And I find it odd that that study came out after the vaccines were rolled out. And you're right. I mean, the vaccines made a lot of money for a lot of people, a lot of governments. And bifidobacterium is free and, I just, I find it odd that not one single person wanted to know why children didn't get sick. What, like, isn't anybody curious as to why they weren't getting sick? And there are legitimate studies that came out, there's like 20, 25 studies now that actually link this bacteria. And it was published on one of the protocols with frontline critical care workers as a treatment plan. So, I do find it very odd that, you're right, quick and profitable fixes, you know, can't hurt to get the quick part too.
Ricardo Vasquez:I'm going to be speaking with an immunologist and her take on, why children were also getting the vaccine, et cetera, it seems to me like if, why we're not to turn this into a whole COVID thing, cause that's not my intention. But why, do you know why children were? Taking the vaccine anyway, if they weren't having negative outcomes, besides the obvious, oh, they can still be spreaders. And as a matter of fact, apparently they were spreading the majority. I don't know if that's true or not. This is what I heard.
Dr Christine Bishara:Listen I think the public was given misinformation and they trusted the authorities who claim to know science and What they didn't realize were that a lot of scientists were being muzzled, and the information that was coming out was the information that only they wanted. And I, from day one, was adamant about not giving this vaccine to children. I was always someone who said, If your risks of dying from this, virus are that high, and you, as a personal, choice for you after discussing with your doctor, want to take it fine. But there's really no reason for children to have gotten this vaccine. We don't know long term implications of MRNA, vaccines, and they were protected naturally by their body's immune system. And that really did frustrate me. I don't know why children were given the vaccine, but the only thing I can come up with is the fact that the public was misinformed. By whoever needed to get that information out and a lot of doctors were muzzled and not speaking about what they saw on the front lines.
Ricardo Vasquez:so Bifidobacterium, is that how it's pronounced? And how do you know that it's linked directly to COVID outcomes? And I'm sure many others. And how do we get more of it?
Dr Christine Bishara:Yeah. Okay. So how do we know that it's linked to Covid outcomes? so our study was a review study because we weren't allowed in the hospitals to do testing. So our study, even though it was the first one, it was just a review study of bifidobacterium and an establishment of hypotheses that, hey, children have a lot more of this. It seems to work on the same pathways. The whole science of it is really making sense. Let's get people probiotics with bifidobacterium, right? how do we know? Well, there've been a lot of studies since then, clinical studies, studies that have shown that people with deficiencies don't do as well. a big study out of Italy by a gastroenterologist who also is like a gut microbiome expert. he had a study where he gave one set of, control patients, the standard protocol for COVID treatment. He gave the other set, the probiotic high dose probiotics, including Bifido. he found that his probiotic group did eight times better. And respiratory wise and other symptom wise, than the control group that was just given the standard treatment protocol. That study was out. We have numerous studies that show this, and it's a cause and effect, right? They found that their bifidobacterium levels are higher than the non centenarian elderly population. So what does that mean? It means if you're unhealthy in your 60s and we look at your gut, you may not have any bifidobacterium or very little, but if you're healthy and we look at your gut and you're a hundred years old, you're going to probably have a lot more bifidobacterium in your gut. And we're seeing a lot of studies related to that. So, can we know for 100 percent for sure? No, but in science, nothing is ever 100%, but we can establish cause and effect by doing different studies and looking at patients guts and seeing, you know, what these people didn't do really well. There's a reason. Kids did really well. There's a reason. how do we increase bifidobacterium? Well, number one, we have to change our diet because bifidobacterium are one of those, microbes in our gut that love fiber. They do really good things with fiber. So I'm not saying you can go a hundred percent plant based, but, what I recommend is a large predominant of your meals to be plant based and then everything else other. So I usually say 70, 30. 70 percent of your meals should be plant based and should be specifically foods that bifido love to feed on. And those foods are, you know, we talked about earlier, but then you also want to feed your gut with probiotic rich foods. So what does probiotic rich foods means? It means foods that already have these bacteria in them. and bifido is not the only beneficial one. It's a big one. It's my favorite. All right. But other ones that we've seen are lactobacillus is a really good one too. and these two, most of these are present in, in, in good numbers in foods like yogurt and keefer and fermented foods like sauerkraut, for example. kimchi, all of those foods, kind of kill two birds with one stone because they're prebiotics like sauerkraut and kimchi, for example. They're prebiotics, right? They have the fibers, the plant-based fibers, but they also have probiotics. So we call that symbiotics because they have both. And those are also good ways to increase bifidobacterium levels.
Ricardo Vasquez:How do we test, I know you said stool, right? Is there a specific test? I'm in Canada. So, for myself, I want to do this. How would I test, my bifidobacterium levels or get a kind of an idea so I can know what's my base?
Dr Christine Bishara:Yeah. and some people they're really resistant, especially if they have like zero Bifido in their gut. But they're a little bit resistant in the beginning to get. a repopulation of bifidobacterium. but what I've seen is the foods and very high dose probiotics in certain people, can help increase the levels. What I check is there are several labs that do it. the one that I use mostly is a vibrant labs. it's called the gut zoomer. there's also, GI effects, does it as well. There are a few other, labs that do it. I do virtual exams, so when I see my patients, I order whatever the test that I feel is best for them. And then they get the stool test at home, the kit, and then they put a sample in the kit and then we send it to the lab and then the lab evaluates it and then based on the findings, because they're looking at your DNA, based on the findings, they tell you what you have less of, what you have more of, and then we strategize. How we can work on increasing levels.
Ricardo Vasquez:That's really interesting. do you find that people that start to improve, their population of bifidobacterium have other things that change in their life? So for example, is there less frequent viruses, cold skin conditions, et cetera? Like what would you say is the biggest change that people have when they maybe just made that one change as far as any more probiotic to their diet and postbiotic?
Dr Christine Bishara:Yeah. And that's an interesting topic because we do know that patients who have higher BMI is usually have lower bifidobacterium levels. and so a lot of people are overweight, but also people with just fatigue and bloating and symptoms like constipation, usually also have lower bifidobacterium levels. People who are chronically inflamed, diabetics, people with heart disease. And so how do we reverse that? We reverse it with changing your diet. And I have seen patients dramatically improve, symptom wise, but also just their energy levels. And oddly enough, we're now also starting to see that, Bifidobacterium along with another, beneficial bacteria called Lactobacillus are actually probably responsible for a majority of the serotonin that we produce in our body. And, again, when people change their diet, they're not only feeling physically better, but they're mentally, just feeling just more uplifted because they're eating foods that are feeding the bacteria that make neurotransmitters like serotonin. And so there's this indirect, you know, step approach where we're seeing the effects. I'm actually an example of somebody who changed my microbiome. I was, obese when I was younger and I had really bad eczema. Acne, and just chronic IBS constipation, symptoms. And it wasn't until I really changed my gut that the symptoms started to go away. So it was just more of like, huh, I feel so much healthier and I have more energy now I feel like than I did when I was younger because I've changed my gut. And I recently also did a gut microbiome analysis and I found higher levels of bifidobacterium I always wonder if I even had that. lower levels when I was younger, but another interesting bacteria that's found, more commonly in thinner individuals than overweight individuals is another beneficial one that we know is called acromantia. So acromantia and bifidobacterium, when they're very low, usually it's in people who are overweight. So we look at these bacteria and we kind of correlate with, what we see clinically But the beauty is that we are able to reverse this and I've seen patients who lose weight by eating the proper diet Actually reverse their ratios in their gut which is really promising and really amazing to see and they feel really good, too
Ricardo Vasquez:Yeah, that's crazy. So people lose weight because Ultimately, they're in a caloric deficit and I'm just curious Because I know people who have done this because I've been like the whole bodybuilding space and I love fitness. I've always been into it. I've actually seen people who lose weight eating junk food this is rare, by the way, and I'm not encouraging anyone to do it. But they did it just to prove a point about, caloric intake, et cetera. And so they were losing weight, but they felt like shit. Because they were eating crap food. So it was like a calories and calories out. But they're like, man, I feel like shit. Like it's about the calories, but I don't know. There's people that do it the right way. And she will do it the wrong way. The right way is eating healthy, you know, increasing fiber, et cetera. Is it the act of losing weight? Is it in and of itself that can increase the beneficial bacteria or is it the actual feeding these organisms what they want? Or is it both? Like, can I eat like shit and lose weight? And as a result, that will still come up. Is there a benefit to lose weight in and of itself is what I'm trying to ask
Dr Christine Bishara:No, no, they're really good questions. And so I would say I'm going to answer that based on what we're seeing short term and what we're seeing long term. So short term, yes. Any caloric deficit, you're going to lose the weight. I mean, you know, calories do count regardless. And so you're definitely going to lose the weight with a caloric deficit, but what's going to happen is those people have a much higher incidence of number one, not staying on the diet because it's not really sustainable, because you know, at some point that market restriction of calories is just going to catch up with you. But you're also, after a while, your gut catches up with you. So you see all these people that ate crap, right? When they were younger and they're like, Oh, I have a great metabolism. And then you see them, you know, 30 years later and they're obese, right? So some people are genetically a little bit more blessed that they could probably handle a little bit longer, but in the end, it all boils down to what you're feeding your gut. And so you might get away with the caloric restriction for a while. And I know I'm going to be a little controversial on this, but I'll explain why is, if you're doing keto and like very high carnivore, you're going to do really well for a while. But at the end of the day, if you're not eating plants, you're really doing a number on your gut and you're going to mess up your gut. so yes, caloric restriction matters, but if you're eating crap, you're not going to help your bacteria produce all these things that we talked about. So why not eat like every once in a while you can have that thing that you, you know, shouldn't be eating every day. It's okay. Like I am not about restricting anything. I'm just about building habits. And the habits that I want you to build are number one, you have to feed those guys what they want, and then you can eat what you want, but not as often. I also want to talk a little bit about giving your gut rest, by doing intermittent fasting. Because another thing that I think a lot of people. have this misinformation about is intermittent fasting equals starvation. And it's not like that at all. It's actually tapping into your body's natural processes that help with detoxification. so I'd love to talk about fasting, but yes, to answer your question in the short term, yeah, you're going to lose the weight, but you're much higher, you know, much more likely to. Cool. Gain the weight back and eventually your gut will look, I hate to say it. Shit, literally, but yeah, exactly. so you're, you're really kind of like trying to eat long term to establish habits and not restricting anything. You don't have to restrict anything. I mean, food on this earth is made for you to enjoy it. We just have to be disciplined and eat everything in moderation. More importantly, feed our guys in their gut what they want to eat because they're the ones that are doing all the work.
Ricardo Vasquez:Yeah, I want to get into intermittent fasting too, but before we do that, so my father passed away last year. And he died of complications, of Parkinson's. Okay. So he, it's hard to say he died because of Parkinson's, but he, you know, it's, it's what led him down that path. And ultimately he had a lot of issues and then he, he got COVID in the hospital and, he recovered from COVID, but then it, it just completely destroyed him. so my father was a vegetarian. Yeah. He was one of those people that he, while he was a vegetarian, he, in my opinion, he didn't eat a very balanced vegetarian diet. so, he probably had a very high carb. Diet, a lot of pastas. And so he did eat a lot of plants though, but I don't think he got enough protein either. And I just wanted to know if, if in your practice and your experience, if there's also a connection with protein, variety in our macronutrients and any connections with bifidobacterium. And because you mentioned neurotransmitters, which I know dopamine is a neurotransmitter, right? Just for my own personal, you know, solve this mystery, these neurologists were very unhelpful for the most, I think some of them meant very well, but just, I just wasn't getting the answers
Dr Christine Bishara:and I think partly it's not because. They just, they don't want to help. It's because they just probably don't really know a lot of information on the gut microbiome. you know, a lot of my colleagues mean well and they're very smart. but we just don't know enough about the gut microbiome. And then unfortunately I also blame the system and not teaching us enough about nutrition. so, you know, yes. And that's actually another good point that you bring up is vegan, vegan and vegetarian diets don't necessarily equal health, healthy diets. It's really what you're eating, right? So you mentioned refined carbohydrates that he was eating a lot of. And what happens with those is because they don't have fiber, and we mentioned before is that we can't digest fiber, right? So fiber goes into our system. Beneficial microbes get what they need from those plant based sources which are antioxidants and the fiber sources to make things. And then the fiber, whatever's left of it, has a faster transit out of our body, right? Because we can't absorb it. So it just bulks up in the stool and we release it in the stool. unfortunately people who are on vegetarian or vegan diets and have a higher, consumption of refined carbs like pastas and breads and things like that. Those are not exiting our body as quickly as if our plant based sources are more predominant, and they actually cause bacterial overgrowth, and they feed harmful bacteria. So when they feed harmful bacteria, the lining of the gut starts to weaken and they start to develop inflammation. And we now know that Parkinson's patients, along with Alzheimer's patients, do have dysbiosis. They have an imbalance in their gut. So, I wonder if, for example, with your dad, even though he was eating plant based, maybe the beneficial bacteria in his gut were outnumbered by the harmful bacteria. I can share also that my father passed away, a couple of years ago from Alzheimer's dementia. he was also a pretty healthy eater, but he had some other risk factors that maybe increased his risk. But we do know that both of these conditions, what happens is the gut and the brain communicate and the gut sends signals to the brain, but it also sends inflammatory signals into the brain. And if your gut is inflamed, those signals are actually, inflammatory signals are actually depositing in your brain and they're affecting. cognitive function, but an increasing risk of these conditions. So interesting enough, there's a lot of research coming out now on Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and they're finding, gut dysbiosis may be, one of the main risk factors for development.
Ricardo Vasquez:Another thing that really pissed me off is not once did they, Interview my father, not once did any independent research and nobody, they never did questionnaires about what he was eating, not eating. They never wanted to do stool samples. I never looked at like, they looked at basic stuff. The, they wanted to do MRIs. He didn't want it. I told him you should do it like just for the sake of let's see what's going on. Maybe it's not hard because there's could have been something else, but the long story short is why, why this is Canada. Why are we not collecting this data to at least assess it with, millions of other people and, and not, you know, with AI now you can correlate, Hey, all these people are low in vitamin D or all these people are low in this bacterium, or they have this type of stool and they can get a lot of insight. I mean, it's like, are you trying to find it? Cause I know there's a lot of people that are trying to find it. Like the Michael J. Fox foundation, they do a lot of great work, but. It just seems to me like the mainstream establishment, they have no interest and not individual doctors or neurologists because they're great. Most of them are very compassionate people and I felt like they really cared just the institutions that educate them, et cetera. it's a touchy subject because I used to get upset. Like, why are you, nobody's fucking asking what he's eating. Like, why does this not matter? How does this not matter?
Dr Christine Bishara:I honestly don't understand why nutrition is not at the forefront of medicine because it is the biggest factor. Our gut is the biggest factor. And again, another reason why I wrote my book is I really want. people, lay people to understand the role their gut plays. But I also want doctors to read this book and understand how important it is because I didn't really know this information either. I wasn't taught this information in medical school I was really interested in the gut and how it affected me as an obese teenager who felt crappy. physically and mentally and how changing my gut made such a big difference for me. And that's why I was interested in, and I learned so much, but most physicians are not taught any of this. and we're definitely not taught it. It was in medical school. We're not taught this in residency. I mean, some positions go on to do like a nutritional, you know, education, additional, education or, you know, more training, but. We just need to get education and information out there for people to really understand the huge role that the gut does play. and you know, I ask that you share the book with everyone that you know, because I think, it's a lot simpler to heal than people think it is. you know, and I write in the book, your body is the best doctor. And I really believe that it just doesn't have the credentials. But it'll tell you symptoms, it'll tell you different things. And if you know what to look for, right? I mean, we have like parenting books, we have books about everything, right? Babies cry and we don't know why they cry, but you know, based on research, we figure out what, you know, their needs are. Well, your body also has needs and it cries for help too. we just don't understand what the symptoms are, but I think just from educating people about the gut, I hope that in five years, we're having a conversation where the gut is really the sole focus of all treatment instead of, other things I'm not opposed to medications, but I believe they should be last resort.
Ricardo Vasquez:I totally agree with you. So we're cutting close on time and I do have a list of questions I prepared that I want to make sure we get through. So I'm going to focus on those if that's okay. Starting with number one, fasting. So what is fasting? Is it good? Is it bad? Why? And also, what do you recommend as far as gut health, etc?
Dr Christine Bishara:Yeah, I'll, I'll try it. I'll try to make that short. What kind of fasting were you doing? Uh, yeah,
so I was primarily doing more so like the 16/8. So I was eating at an eight hour window, typically between one and nine or 12 to eight. but occasionally I would do like a 24 hour fast every week, every two weeks I would just be like, one day I'd wake up on a Sunday and I'd say, you know, I'm not gonna eat today. I didn't really have a specific thing. now I'm on a hyper, hypertrophic phase at the gym. I'm trying to gain a lot of weight. I just can't fit in the amount of calories I need in eight hours. Cause then I'm like overstuffing. So it's just a phase for next few months, but I'll probably go back to that like 16, eight, unless you tell me, don't do that.
Dr Christine Bishara:Oh, that's my favorite one. A 16, eight or 18, six. and how did you feel when you were fasting? I'm interviewing you.
Honestly, I don't notice much of a difference because I noticed that my calories are pretty much the same. And so I think I maintained my caloric needs or I was slightly at a deficit because I have a pretty low body fat percentage. So to be very honest, I think if I didn't eat during my workouts, which is primarily how it started, I always felt my workouts were much better. And I also didn't feel that afternoon fog where I felt like I was going to crash. That's about it. Everything else seemed to be the same for me personally. But again, my lifestyle is I try to eat pretty healthy in general.
Dr Christine Bishara:fasting does not mean starving. It doesn't mean restricting your calories significantly. it does mean if you want to lose weight, you can restrict your calories a little bit, because caloric intake does matter. but it's not restricting them too much and the reason why you don't want to restrict too much is you generate a stress response from your body because your body is always in survival mode and if you restrict too much and you fast for too long, your body thinks that you are in danger and so it holds on to fat. And it releases stress responders like cortisol and if they're released chronically, then your body's going to go into kind of survival and fast storage mode. in women, this is where a lot of misinformation happens is they could have a problem with their fertility if they're restricting too much and fasting for too long. However, if done right, fasting is good for 99 percent of individuals. the only person that shouldn't be fasting is somebody who's, a very poorly controlled diabetic and on insulin and their blood glucose levels tends to drop, or just be affected. very thin individuals or people with, eating disorders should not be fasting. Everyone else, I think fasting is really, it's part of your natural being. you know, if you look back at our ancestors. And this is actually where we kind of base also like healthy eating. if you look back at our ancestors, they didn't have access to the grocery store on a regular basis and they didn't have a fridge full of food. They hunted and they gathered and they hunted animals and they ate them. But that didn't happen all the time. That happened very infrequently. But what they ate mostly was what they found in nature and they gathered. plants off of trees, berries, things like that. And so, they didn't eat all day, they practice intermittent fasting, inadvertently. And so, my reasoning for fasting is because of the internal mechanisms that happen in your body. as a result of giving your gut time of rest, right? So what are you doing when you fast? You're giving your gut time of rest to process other functions. So we talked about the gut having a big role in the immune system, producing neurotransmitters. So if you're constantly eating, what are you doing? Your body's constantly, processing the food. Your gut is constantly digesting and it's not doing the other functions that are important for our body. And so this is why I love intermittent fasting because when you do fast, you give your body and your gut the nutrition it needs during a certain time period. And then during the times when you're not fasting is you're giving your body that time to do other functions, right? So what are the other functions? So, it's processing, right? Of different things. It's production of neurotransmitters, but we also sometimes want to, lighten the load on our liver, and burn fat because burning fat produces ketones and a lot of people love ketosis, but why does ketosis feel so great? It's because ketones really help to fuel our cells and our brain in a much better capacity than external glucose does. So when we fast, and I can kind of go into it, do you want the details?
Ricardo Vasquez:Of course I want the details. I'll simplify them. So you eat, right?
Dr Christine Bishara:You're eating. What happens? Your body extracts that glucose from whatever you eat and it utilizes it. It transports it to cells. We can't utilize glucose in the cells without insulin. So insulin is like our transporter. It helps to get that glucose into the cells, right? So when we don't eat. Okay, so say you've gone three, four hours and you haven't eaten, and you kind of feel like a little bit hungry, right? Like you get a little nudge to eat. That nudge is actually not, we need to eat, like you're going to die if you don't eat. That nudge is your insulin levels dropping because insulin only comes out when food is needed to be transported. So the drop in insulin is what causes you to be hungry because your body is kind of trying to rely on external sources of glucose Okay. And if you're feeding it, it's easy work for your body. You eat, it extracts the glucose, transports the cells, insulin helps with that, everything's good. But our body is made for harder and more amazing things. So when you don't eat, four hours in, your insulin levels drop, okay? So that drop in insulin kind of makes you a little hungry because your body's trying to figure out what the next step is. Are you going to eat and feed me or am I, am I going to have to like, you know, tap into the next thing that I need to do. So when insulin levels drop, you get hungry, and then if you don't eat, then your insulin levels drop so much that your glucagon levels, which is another hormone, increase. So it's almost like a switch for your body, that hunger. And that switch for your body to, to switch into the secondary mode, which I call plan B. So plan A is eating. Plan B is your body now needs to figure out glucose sources for your cells. So what is it going to do? it actually has stored glucose in the liver, believe it or not, it's always ready for backup. So, that stored glucose in the liver is called glycogen. And we have about a thousand to twelve hundred calories of stored glycogen in our liver. And so the next step is our body goes to the liver, breaks down that glycogen, uses that glycogen as glucose source, because glycogen breaks down into glucose and it gets transported to the cells. So it's great, right? You're utilizing glycogen, you're letting your body burn that fuel and it's fueling cells. So now you've depleted your body of external glucose and you've depleted your body of internal glycogen. And now you haven't eaten. So this process of glycogen burning usually ends around 10 hours, 10 to 12 hours of not eating, right? So then after that, and some people can take a little bit longer, like 14 hours. After about 14 hours or so, your body still needs to fuel cells and it doesn't know what to do because you're not feeding it and it ran out of glycogen. So now it taps into fat cells. So it goes to fat and it starts to burn fat cells and everybody knows ketosis, right? And so fat cells turn into ketones and then it starts applying cells with ketones. And ketones, in my opinion, on a very, pure form of fuel. if you think about when you, fuel your car with regular unleaded versus premium because the premium helps your car run a little bit better. ketones help your body run better than external sources of glucose. So now you're fueling your body on ketosis, right? It's great. Your cells are happy. Ketosis for the brain is amazing and everybody's happy and this is happening around 16 hours you're burning fat. So between 16 and 18 hours you're starting to burn fat, which is great, right? A lot of people want that. Now, what happens, if you fast a little bit longer? So now your body's really like, I don't know, I don't know what to do, right? And so it starts to assess the situation, and I'll give you an example, I always give an example of, when your phone battery's dying. What do you do with your phone? You put it in low battery mode, right? Like if you're out and you don't have a charger and so your body does the same thing, it puts itself in low battery mode because now it's seeing that your consumption of food is really low. It's burning, you know, fat and it's trying to get fuel. And so what it starts to do is it now starts to put itself in low battery mode and it starts to look at all the cells in front of it. And it's saying, you know what, this cell is getting a little bit old and I'm not sure if I need it and it's getting a little dysfunctional, I'm going to get rid of that cell. I'm going to kill it. And so it reserves the energy for only the really good healthy cells. And that process is called autophagy. And what autophagy does is it actually helps our immune system and it helps our health because now we're getting rid of these old dysfunctional cells and some of them may have been cancerous cells or inflammatory cells. And so when you're In autophagy, you're getting rid of the dysfunctional cells prematurely, but it's really good for your body. And that usually kicks in at around 20 hours. So what I usually do is I do 16 to 18 hour fasts, so that I'm at least kicking into that fat burning mode and at least that kind of lighten the load on my liver by burning the glycogen. But I don't fast 20 to 24 hours all the time. I only do it like once a month or so, cause I want that autophagy every once in a while. That's all. But as a lifestyle, 16, eight is really good because you're tapping into those seconders mechanisms, but you're not completely giving your body that, right.
Ricardo Vasquez:So you were mentioning autophagy and the benefits of it, basically getting the body starts getting rid of dead cells or old cells, perhaps cancer cells, et cetera. And so another question I had with respect to autophagy, because it recently just came to my attention. I follow, Dr. Lane Norton, if you're familiar with him an expert in nutrition. he actually is not a proponent of fasting. He says, it's great if it's a tool that you'd like to use for some people, it makes you feel mental clarity, et cetera. But he says, there's nothing that fasting does that you can't do on a caloric restricted diet. He says that the same benefits come from being in a caloric deficit, which includes autophagy, but he says, if it is Helpful for people to just Eat in a shorter window, makes it more manageable, good for mental fog, at least this finds it, but he just feels like it's overly hyped up
Dr Christine Bishara:and
that the real magic is being in a caloric deficit. So, but I'm just wondering what your take on that is. I don't know if I agree or not, but I know enough to really argue.
Dr Christine Bishara:Well, there's two ways of inducing the benefits that we talk about the autophagy and he's right about caloric restriction. If your body's not getting enough fuel externally, it's going to tap into those secondary, mechanisms. Yes, he's right in that caloric restriction does help you tap in. to other sources of fuel that your body has. But unfortunately what I find a problem is, most people can't sustain, caloric restriction for too long. Some people are very disciplined in that, but the majority of people cannot sustain a marked caloric, restriction for very long. And so this is why you have fasting is because fasting for me tells someone who's interested is you can eat. kind of what you want. I mean, you want to eat obviously healthy, but you don't have to necessarily restrict your calories dramatically in order for you to tap into glycogenolysis, which is that burning of glycogen and ketosis, which is that burning effect, right? Gluconeogenesis. So what he's saying is correct. I just find that, fasting is an easier way for people to actually get those benefits. But yes, caloric restriction is doing the same thing. Your body is restricted from external sources of fuel and it needs to tap into internal sources. So both get to the same end point. As they say, there's several ways to climb a mountain, it's basically the same thing. I like fasting because also, you're giving your gut that time of rest to do other functions.
Ricardo Vasquez:I love it too, personally, even just for the mental discipline factor of something difficult, you know, essentially taking control of my body and saying, no, right now we're going to, we're going to rest like a little toddler. That means the discipline. I think there's many benefits beyond autophagy personally. I do like to do it from time to time as well and make it part of my practice. How do you know if you have gut issues,
Dr Christine Bishara:there's the obvious, not so obvious, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, just upset stomach, right? Those are obvious gut related, symptoms. Not so obvious, is, skin issues. eczema, acne, sometimes those will show up if you have gut issues. New food intolerances are another big one. So if you weren't allergic to nuts and all of a sudden you're allergic to nuts, that might indicate that your gut lining is starting to get a little weaker and your immune system's responding. In a way that it shouldn't necessarily respond so hyper reactive. another thing that might not be so obvious is weight gain. because again, if your gut is not healthy, you're not absorbing the nutrients appropriately. and you're not able to make those postbiotics that the gut microbes make. And one of those postbiotics is, satiety signals. And satiety, peptides, PYY is one of them, that send signals to your brain and indicate that you're satisfied. So that's another reason why you might have weight gain if you have issues. those are kind of the three big ones that I would say, I see the most often the weight gain, skin, and, new food intolerances. Another one, which, we didn't know until four years ago, or at least most people didn't know is, the way your immune system reacts to certain things. So some people react to COVID really badly, and they probably had a really unhealthy gut as a result, and some people didn't.
Ricardo Vasquez:about thirst signal? Is that related to the gut or is that a completely different mechanism?
Dr Christine Bishara:Are you hydrating enough throughout the day?
I drink this thing at least once a day, which holds about eight cups of water. And I also have a lot of water rich foods, but I have gone a full eight to 10 hours without So, yeah. Water and I have no thirst signal.
Dr Christine Bishara:Well, that indicates that your body's well hydrated. Your body only goes into thirst when it's really, really dehydrated. So, yeah. So if you're maintaining, enough, fluid intake, I rarely get thirsty too, because I'm always drinking. Yeah. so thirst is not a good sign. It means that your body has gone to that other side. Uh, my pee is
somewhat clear. Too much information.
Dr Christine Bishara:Look at your pee and it's like, it should be like a light yellow lemonade kind of color
Ricardo Vasquez:What are the top things people should stop doing immediately to improve their gut health?
Dr Christine Bishara:stop eating all day. it's not good for your gut to eat all day. Stop eating out all the time. Stuff they put in food in restaurants and, and, and all the other fast food places, but even like, you know, fancy restaurants, there's a reason it tastes really good. There's, there's a lot of, a lot of heavy stuff being put in there. Heavy cream. I'm not opposed to heavy cream, but you don't know how much heavy cream is going in there. You don't know how much butter is going in there. And so yes, they're fine and butter is healthy, but calories do count. And if you're eating out all the time and you're eating really rich foods. You know, you're going to be gaining weight. So that's one, stop drinking sugary foods or drinks. because that's another one, unnecessary calories, sugary drinks are really bad for you too. So those are the big ones.
Ricardo Vasquez:Awesome. And what about stuff like digestive enzymes? And also it's a separate question, but kombucha, you talk about fermented food. What do you think about kombucha and digestive enzymes?
Dr Christine Bishara:digestive enzymes. I don't think everybody needs them. It really depends on what's going on with you. I hate to blanket recommend everything. I don't even blanket recommend probiotics to be honest, because taking them on a regular basis is also not good because then you kind of lose that diversity from food. People rely on that same probiotic strain every day. I don't blanket recommend anything except eating healthy because food is really the best source. kombucha, there's nothing wrong with every once in a while, but it does have, you know, sugar, and it has calories, so nothing wrong with it, but, don't think kombucha is going to be your daily probiotic and then you're good to go.
Ricardo Vasquez:Sorry, but you're saying kombucha's okay though, it's not a bad thing, correct?
Dr Christine Bishara:I mean, if you're gonna have the, like, the sweet drink, have the kombucha over the, you know, the orange juice or the grape juice
Ricardo Vasquez:my girl actually makes the kombucha, so she just makes it with the scoby, mushroom, whatever, and then she does her whole process, and then she'll make the eggs a different fruit. or ginger. That's it. She doesn't add pretty much or very little. I think she has to add brown sugar for this.
Dr Christine Bishara:have a little fear because that's what the bacteria feed on.
So I'll have like one bottle a day, maybe 15 times out of the month. Cause I just love the way it tastes.
Dr Christine Bishara:Yeah. There's a lot of commercial kombuchas that have a lot of added sugar. Cause everybody wants to get a health kick, but you know, the marketers are trying to get people to drink it and they're putting a lot more sugar than there should be.
Coffee. Good or bad?
Dr Christine Bishara:I like my coffee. everything moderation. So okay.
Ricardo Vasquez:Well, I want to respect your time and you have to go, which sucks because I have so many more questions to ask you. Is there anything else that I have missed that perhaps you wanted to touch on? I think people should be aware of what's going on with their digestive system. you mentioned some resources for them potentially checking the levels of the good bacteria and what they can do as far as fermented foods for the prebiotics, probiotics, and the postbiotics. And is there anything else besides your book, which we'll probably go into much more detail. I will be telling everybody about it as well.
Dr Christine Bishara:Thank you. I mean, there's so much in the book that should be also kind of explored. But if I had one last thing to say, here is vitamin D, everybody should get their vitamin D level and everybody should supplement if needed. And a little bit of time in the sun is not going to kill you. I mean, I'm a proponent of sunscreen, but I'm also a proponent of sitting in the sun and getting a little bit of that vitamin D from the sun.
Ricardo Vasquez:Yeah. I've heard like vitamin K or something if I miss it or should I say, is it required or is this vitamin D okay?
Dr Christine Bishara:I don't like to blanket, recommend vitamin K because some people have, clotting issues and they're on blood thinners that vitamin K could interfere with. So, yes, it's good to take vitamin K with vitamin D to help prevent calcification in the arteries, but I don't blanket recommend vitamin K with D. I have to really see the person and know what their history is.
Ricardo Vasquez:Okay. Dr. Christine Bishara, please tell us where we can find you.
Dr Christine Bishara:I guess everybody's on, I'm in a lot of platforms, but I guess everybody's on Instagram these days. So it's easier there. I post a lot of good videos, Dr. Christine B, doctor spelled out. So D O C T O R. And then my name, Christine B. Thank you.
Probably,
Dr Christine Bishara:probably the big one.
And your book is called what again?
Dr Christine Bishara:The Gut Revolution.
Thank you so much.
Dr Christine Bishara:Sounds good. Thank you
for being here. I appreciate you.